Mindstream in Buddhist philosophy is the moment-to-moment "continuum" (Sanskrit: saṃtāna) of awareness. There are a number of terms in the Buddhist literature that may well be rendered "mindstream". For these, see below.

The mindstream doctrine, like most Buddhist doctrines, is not homogeneous and shows historical development, different applications according to context and varied definitions employed by different Buddhist traditions.

Most Buddhist schools are committed doctrinally to anātman (Pali: anattā), "non-self," the teaching that none of the things perceived by the senses constitute a "self." As Thanissaro Bhikkhu explains, "...the Buddha was asked point-blank whether or not there was a self, he refused to answer. When later asked why, he said that to hold either that there is a self or that there is no self is to fall into extreme forms of wrong view that make the path of Buddhist practice impossible." Scholar Herbert V. Gunther further explains, "an individual, which in other systems is imagined as a combination of matter and a permanent mental principle (ātman), is in reality a continuously changing stream of that which from one viewpoint is believed to be matter and from another a mind. However, what we call the mental and the material occurs in a unity of organization. Organization is something dynamic."