bhavanga a subliminal mode of consciousness, according to Theravada Buddhist philosophers, in which no mental activity occurs. The continued existence of the bhavanga-mind in states where there is no intentional mental activity (e.g., dreamless sleep) is what guarantees the continuance of a particular mental continuum in such states. It operates also in ordinary events of sensation and conceptualization, being connected with such intentional mental events in complex ways, and is appealed to as an explanatory category in the accounts of the process leading from death to rebirth. Some Buddhists also use it as a soteriological category, identifying the bhavanga-mind with mind in its pure state, mind as luminous and radiant. See also ALAYA- VIJÑA ANA , NIRODHA -SAMA APATT. P.J.G.