Bīja

In Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, the Sanskrit term Bīja () (Jp. 種子 shuji) (Chinese 種子 zhǒngzǐ), literally seed, is used as a metaphor for the origin or cause of things and cognate with bindu. thumb|right|100px|The Om bija in Esoteric Buddhism

==Buddhist theory of karmic seeds== Various schools of Buddhist thought held that karmic effects arose out of seeds that were latent in an individual's mindstream or psycho-physical continuum. Rupert Gethin describes the theory thus: