Transcript File

YOGACARA SCHOOL
• The Yogacara school provided methods by
which one could identify and correct the
cognitive errors inherent in the way the mind
works.
• The founding of Yogacara, is usually attributed
to ASANGA and VASUBANDHU (4th to 5th
century C.E.), but most of its unique concepts
had been introduced at least a century earlier in
scriptures such as the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra.
Historical overview
• Key Yogacara notions such as only-cognition
(vijñaptimātra), three self-natures (trisvabhāva), the
ĀLAYAVIJŇĀNA (warehouse consciousness), and the
theory of eight consciousnesses were introduced in the
Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra and received more detailed,
systematic treatment in the writings of Asanga and
Vasubandhu.
• Born Brahmans in Purusapura (Pakistan) to the same
mother but different fathers.
• Asanga entering the MAHISASAKA school, while
Vasubandhu joined the Vaibhāsikas in their stronghold in
Kashmir.
• According to tradition, after many years of
fruitless practice and solitary meditation, in a
moment of utter despair, Asanga began
receiving instruction from the future Buddha,
MAITREYA, who resides in the Tusita heaven.
• Maitreya dictated new texts for Asanga to
disseminate. Asanga also composed works
under his own name, though the Chinese and
Tibetan traditions disagree about the attribution
of these texts.
• For instance, both ascribe the Mahayanasamgraha,
Abhidharmasamuccaya, and Mahayanasutrlamkara
to Asanga, and Madhyantavibhaga to Maitreya, but
Chinese tradition attributes the Yogacarabhumi to
Maitreya, whereas Tibetans credit Asanga with this
text.
• Vasubandhu grew dissatisfied with Vaibhasika
doctrine and, became a Yogacara through
Asanga’s influence.
• Asanga’s Yogacarabhumi, is a comprehensive
encyclopedia of how one progresses along the
stages of the path to enlightenment.
• Vasubandhu’s
pre-Yogacara,
the
ABHIDHARMAKOSABHASYA, also provides a
comprehensive, detailed overview of the Buddhist
path.
• After Vasubandhu, Yogacara developed into two
distinct directions or branches:
• (1) a logico-epistemic tradition, exemplified by such
thinkers as Dignaga, DHARMAKIRTI, Santaraksita,
and Ratnakrti; and
• (2) an abhidharma-style psychology, exemplified by
such
thinkers
as
Sthiramati,
Dharmapala,
XUANZANG, and Vintadeva.
Classic texts
• The Yogacarabhumi (Maitreya-Asanga) describes
seventeen stages (bhumis) of practice, beginning
with an exposition of what it means to have a body
with the five sensory consciousnesses, and moving
on to instructions on developing a vast array of
mental and meditative capacities and on engaging
the sravaka (HINAYANA), PRATYEKABUDDHA,
and BODHISATTVA vehicles, culminating in
NIRVANA without remainder.
• The Mahayanasamgraha details how hearing,
thinking, and contemplating the Mahayana
teachings destroys the ālayavijñāna from within,
like a germ infecting a host, since the Buddha’s
word (buddhavacana) is ultimately irreducible to
mental constructions; eliminating the ālayavijñāna
therefore results in buddhahood.
• The Madhyantavibhaga, implicitly deploying the theory
of three natures (trisvabhava) to define and explicate
Buddhist
practice,
illustrates
how
SUNYATA
(EMPTINESS)
and
cultivating
positive
insight
(parinispanna) act as an antidote (pratipaksa) to the
pervasive false mental constructions (parikalpita) one
projects as lived experience, resulting in reality being
experienced just as it is (purified paratantra).
• Vasubandhu’s
Karmasiddhiprakarana
(Investigation
Establishing
[the
Correct
Understanding] of Karma) discusses various
Buddhist theories on how karma works,
concluding that all is momentary but held
together by causal chains, consequences of
actions requiting their doer through mental
causal chains embodied in the alayavijñana.
• Vasubandhu’s most important Yogacara texts
are his Viṃsatikā (Twenty Verses) with
commentary and Triṃsikā (Thirty Verses),
together sometimes called the Vijñaptimātra
Vijñaptimātra
• vijñaptimātra
(“consciousness-only”
or
“representation-only”), which is not meant to
suggest that only the mind is real.
• Vijñapti is grammatically a causative form, “what
makes known,” and thus indicates that what
appears in cognition is constructed, projected by
consciousness, rather than passively received
from outside by consciousness.
• Since nothing appears to us except within our
acts of consciousness, all is vijñaptimatra.
• Yogacara rejects solipsism and theories of a
universal mind that subsumes individuals.
• According to Yogacara, each individual is a
distinct consciousness stream or mental
continuum (cittasantana), and individuals can
communicate with each other, teach and learn
from each other, and influence and affect each
other.
• Even rūpa (sensorial materiality) is accepted, if
one realizes that physicality is only known as
such through sensation and cognition.
• Everything we know, conceive, imagine, or are aware of,
we know through cognition, including the notion that
entities might exist independent of our cognition.
• Although the mind does not create the physical world, it
generates the interpretative categories through which we
know and classify the physical world
• Those interpretations, which are projections of
our desires and anxieties, become obstructions
(āvarana) preventing us from seeing what is
actually the case.
• In simple terms, we are blinded by our own selfinterests, our own prejudices, our desires.
Unenlightened cognition is an appropriative act.
• Yogacāra does not speak about subjects and
objects; instead, it analyzes perception in terms
of graspers (grāhaka) and what is grasped
(grāhya).
• From a Buddhist point of view, consciousness is
differentiated from the soul in that the former is
an
ever-changing,
momentary,
and
impermanent element.
• Consciousness, however, is considered to
continue like a stream and is thought to be
somehow transmitted from one life to the next,
thus enabling karmic causality over lifetimes.
• Consciousness also keeps the body alive and
distinguishes animate beings from inanimate
elements.
• According to the scriptures that put forth the first
pattern, as long as the consciousness has
objects (alambana) to be conceived and to be
attached to, it stays in the realm of SAMSARA,
and the psycho-physical existence will enter the
womb (i.e., one will be reborn in the next life
without being liberated from samsara).
• Twelve causal links basically consists of two
portions: the first (one through seven; ignorance
through feeling) centering on consciousness,
and the second (eight through twelve; craving
through old age and death) centering on craving.
• The third item, Consciousness, is usually
understood as the consciousness at the moment
of conception.
• According to Yogacara tradition, at the time of
one’s death, a powerful attachment to one’s own
existence
arises
and
makes
one’s
consciousness grasp the next life.
• Driven by this perverted thought, the being
enters the womb, and the consciousness
merges with the united semen and “blood,” after
which the semen-blood combination becomes a
sentient embryo.
• The Buddhist notion of karma is intimately
connected to the notion of appropriation
(upādāna).
• By definition, whatever is noncognitive can have
no karmic implications or consequences.
• Intention means desiring something.
• Only cognitive acts can have karmic
repercussions. This would include meaningful
bodily gestures that communicate intentions
(such gestures are also called vijñapti).
• Buddhists need focus only on what occurs within the
domain of cognitive conditions (cittagocara).
• Categories such as external object and materiality
(rūpa) are cognitive constructions.
• Materiality is a word for the colors, textures, sounds,
and so on that we cognize in acts of perception, and
it is only to the extent that are perceived and
ideologically grasped, thereby becoming objects of
attachment, that they have karmic significance.
• The deepest-seated erroneous view to which
SENTIENT BEINGS cling, according to
Buddhism, is atmadrsti, the view that a
permanent, eternal, immutable, independent self
exists.
• No such self exists, and deep down we know
that. This makes us anxious, since it entails that
no self or identity endures forever.
• Yogacara texts say: Negate the object, and the
self is also negated
Three natures (trisvabhāva)
• The pervasive mental constructions that obstruct
our view of what truly is the case are called
parikalpita (imaginative construction).
• The actual webs of causes and conditions at
play are called paratantra (dependent on other
[causes])..
• Ordinarily paratantra is infested with parikalpita.
• Parinispanna (consummation) is the removal of
parikalpita from paratantra, leaving only purified
paratantra.
• Since the notion of “self-nature” is itself a parikalpic idea
that presumes self-hood, it too must be eliminated.
• Thus the three self-natures are actually three non-selfnatures (tri-nihsvabhāva).
• Parikalpita is devoid of self-nature since it is
unreal by definition.
• Paratantra lacks self-nature, since otherdependence precludes “self” nature.
• Parinispanna—the Yogacara counterpart to the
Madhyamaka notion of s´unyata (emptiness),
which stands for the lack of self-nature in
everything—is the antithesis of self-nature.
• Thus the three self-natures are ultimately
understood as three non-self-natures.
• If causality requires temporal contiguity, how can
consciousness temporarily cease during sleep,
unconscious states, certain forms of meditation,
or between lives, and then suddenly
recommence?
• Where did it reside in the interim?
• If karmic consequences occur long after the act
they are requiting was committed, and there is
no substantial self, what links the act to its
eventual karmic effect, and in what does this
linkage reside?
• Most importantly, how can consciousnesses that
are derivative of contact between organs and
objects become projective?
• Manovijñāna became the organ of the sixth
consciousness, rather than its by-product;
manas became the seventh consciousness,
responsible for appropriating experience as
“mine” and thus infesting experience with a
sense of self-hood (and thus also called
ādānavijñāna, “appropriative consciousness,”
and klistamanas, “defiled mind”).
• Consciousness that merges with the semenblood combination is understood as the
storehouse consciousness (ālayavijñāna).
• The ālayavijñāna, the deepest layer of one’s
subconsciousness, maintains all the residue of
past KARMA as “seeds,” which will give rise to
their fruits in the future.
• Experiences produce seeds (bija) and
perfumings (vāsanā) that are deposited in the
ālayavijñāna.
• These seeds regenerate new seeds each
• Consciousness that merges with the semenblood combination is understood as the
storehouse consciousness (ālayavijñāna).
• The ālayavijñāna, the deepest layer of one’s
subconsciousness, maintains all the residue of
past KARMA as “seeds,” which will give rise to
their fruits in the future.
• Experiences produce seeds (bija) and
perfumings (vāsanā) that are deposited in the
ālayavijñāna.
• These seeds regenerate new seeds each
• The ālayavijñāna flows onward like a constant
stream, changing each moment with each new
experience, thus providing karmic continuity as
the seeds reach fruition.
• The ālayavijñāna continues to function even
while the other consciousnesses become
temporarily inoperative, unconscious.
• Hence it is also called “foundational
consciousness” (mūlavijñāna).
• Although it stores karmic seeds and engenders
their projection, the ālayavijñāna is a karmically
Purification of the mental
stream
• Yogacara practice consists of analyzing cognitive
processes in order to purify the mental stream of
pollutants (asrava), removing all obstructions to
unexcelled complete enlightenment.
• Bad seeds and perfumings need to be filtered out, while
good seeds need to be watered and cultivated, so they
will reach fruition.
• Mental disturbances (klesa), such as greed,
hatred, delusion, arrogance, wrong views, envy,
shamelessness, and so on, are gradually
eliminated, while karmically wholesome mental
conditions, such as nonharming, serenity,
carefulness, and equanimity, are strengthened.
• As the obstructions from emotional and mental
obstructions (klesāvarana) are eliminated,
purification continues until the deepest seated
cognitive obstructions (jñeyāvarana) are finally
extinguished.