Vijñāna (Sanskrit: विज्ञान) or viññāṇa (Pali: विञ्ञाण) is translated as "consciousness", "life force", "mind", or "discernment".

The term vijñāna is mentioned in many early Upanishads, where it has been translated by terms such as understanding, knowledge, and intelligence.

In the Pāli Canon's Sutta Pitaka's first four nikāyas, viññāṇa is one of three overlapping Pali terms used to refer to the mind, the others being manas and citta. Each is used in the generic and non-technical sense of "mind" in general, but the three are sometimes used in sequence to refer to one's mental processes as a whole. Their primary uses are, however, distinct.

This section considers the Buddhist concept primarily in terms of Early Buddhism's Pali literature as well as in the literature of other Buddhist schools.

Throughout Pali literature, viññāṇa can be found as one of a handful of synonyms for the mental force that animates the otherwise inert material body. In a number of Pali texts though, the term has a more nuanced and context-specific (or "technical") meaning. In particular, in the Pali Canon's "Discourse Basket" (Suttapitaka), viññāṇa (generally translated as "consciousness") is discussed in at least three related but different contexts:

In the Pali Canon's Abhidhamma and in post-canonical Pali commentaries, consciousness (viññāṇa) is further analyzed into 89 different states which are categorized in accordance with their karmic results.

In Buddhism, the six sense bases (Pali: saḷāyatana; Skt.: ṣaḍāyatana) refer to the five physical sense organs (cf. receptive field) (belonging to the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body), the mind (referred to as the sixth sense base) and their associated objects (visual forms, sounds, odors, flavors, touch and mental objects). Based on the six sense bases, a number of mental factors arise including six "types" or "classes" of consciousness (viññāṇa-kāyā). More specifically, according to this analysis, the six types of consciousness are eye-consciousness (that is, consciousness based on the eye), ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness and mind-consciousness.

In this context, for instance, when an ear's receptive field (the proximal stimulus, more commonly known by Buddhists as a sense base, or sense organ) and sound (the distal stimulus, or sense object) are present, the associated (ear-related) consciousness arises. The arising of these three elements (dhātu) – e.g. ear, sound and ear-consciousness – lead to the percept, known as "contact" and in turn causes a pleasant, unpleasant or neutral "feeling" to arise. It is from such feeling that "craving" arises. (See Fig. 1.)