Doctrine
Yogācāra philosophy is primarily meant to aid in the practice of . Yogācārins made usage of ideas from previous traditions, such(a) as Prajñāpāramitā and the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma, to established a new schema for spiritual practice.
According to Thomas Kochumuttom, Yogācāra is "meant to be an version of experience, rather than a system of emptiness. They defecate a complex system, and regarded and identified separately. can be taken as a an fundamental or characteristic component of something abstract. of departure for understanding Yogācāra.
One of the main attaches of Yogācāra philosophy is the concept of vijñapti-mātra. It is often used interchangeably with the term citta-mātra, but they have different meanings. The specifics translation of both terms is "consciousness-only" or "mind-only." Several innovative researchers object to this translation, and the accompanying names of "absolute idealism" or "idealistic monism". A better translation for vijñapti-mātra is representation-only, while an pick translation for citta mind, thought mātra only, exclusively has not been proposed.
According to Lambert Schmithausen, the earliest surviving profile of this term is in chapter 8 of the Saṅdhinirmocana Sūtra, which has only survived in Tibetan and Chinese translations that differ in syntax and meaning. The passage is depicted as a response by the Buddha to a question which asks "whether the images or replicas *pratibimba which are the object *gocara of meditative concentration *samadhi, are different/separate *bhinna from the contemplating mind *citta or not." The Buddha says they are not different, "Because these images are vijñapti-mātra." The text goes on to affirm that the same is true for objects of ordinary perception.
Regarding existing Sanskrit sources, the term appears in the first verse of Vasubandhu's Vimśatikā, which is a locus classicus of the idea, it states:
Vijñaptimātram evaitad asad arthāvabhāsanāt yathā taimirikasyāsat keśa candrādi darśanam.
"This [world] is vijñaptimātra, since it manifests itself as an unreal object artha, just like the case of those with cataracts seeing unreal hairs in the moon and the like."
According to Mark Siderits, what Vasubandhu means here is that we are only ever aware of mental images or impressions which manifest themselves as external objects, but "there is actually no such(a) thing external the mind."
The term also appears in Asaṅga's classic Yogācāra work, the Mahāyānasaṃgraha no Sanskrit original, trans. from Tibetan:
These representations vijñapti are mere representations vijñapti-mātra, because there is no [corresponding] thing/object artha...Just as in a dream there appear, even without a thing/object artha, just in the mind alone, forms/images of all kinds of things/objects like visibles, sounds, smells, tastes, tangibles, houses, forests, land, and mountains, and yet there are no [such] things/objects at all in that [place]. MSg II.6
The term is sometimes used as a synonym with citta-mātra mere citta, which is also used as a name for the school that suggests Idealism. Schmithausen writes that the number one appearance of this term is in the Pratyupanna samadhi sutra, which states:
This or: whatever belongs to this triple world *traidhātuka is nothing but mind or thought: *cittamatra. Why? Because however I imagine things, that is how they appear.
According to Bruce Cameron Hall, the interpretation of this doctrine as a form of subjective or absolute idealism has been "the near common "outside" interpretation of Vijñānavāda, not only by modern writers, but by its ancient opponents, both Hindu and Buddhist."
Scholars such as Saam Trivedi argue that Yogācāra is similar to Idealism closer to a Kantian epistemic idealism, though they note that it is its own unique form and that it might be confusing to categorize it as such. Paul Williams, citing Griffiths, writes that it could be termed "dynamic idealism". Sean Butler argues for the idealistic nature of Yogācāra, noting that there are many similarities between Yogācāra and the systems of Kant and Berkeley. Jay Garfield also argues that Yogācāra is "akin to the idealisms defended by such Western philosophers as Berkeley, Kant and Schopenhauer."
Jonathan Gold writes that the Yogācāra thinker Vasubandhu can be said to be an idealist similar to Kant, in the sense that for him, everything in experience as alive as its causal support is mental, and thus he makes causal priority to the mental. At the same time however, this is only in the conventional realm, since "mind" is just another concept and true reality for Vasubandhu is ineffable, "an inconceivable “thusness” tathatā." Indeed, the Vimśatikā states that the very opinion of vijñapti-mātra must also be understood to be itself a self-less construction and thus vijñapti-mātra is not thetruth paramārtha-satya in Yogācāra. Thus according to Gold, while Vasubandhu's vijñapti-mātra can be said to be a “conventionalist idealism”, it is to be seen as unique and different from Western forms, especially Hegelian Absolute Idealism.
Other scholars note that it is a mistake to conflate the two terms vijñapti-mātra and citta-mātra. While the requirements translations for both vijñapti-mātra and citta-matra are often "consciousness only" and "mind-only" signifying an Idealistic doctrine, objections are raised to this conflation, as alive as to Idealistic interpretation. Different choice translations for vijñapti-mātra have been proposed, such as representation-only, ideation-only, impressions-only and perception-only.
David Kalupahana argues that citta-mātra signifies a metaphysical reification of mind into an absolute, while vijñapti-mātra target to aepistemological approach. According to Kalupahana, the term vijñapti-mātra replaced the "more metaphysical" term citta-mātra used in the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra. The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra "appears to be one of the earliest attempts to provide a philosophical justification for the Absolutism that emerged in Mahayana in description to the concept of Buddha". It uses the term citta-mātra, which means properly "thought-only". By using this term it develops an ontology, in contrast to the epistemology of the term vijñapti-mātra. The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra equates citta and the absolute. According to Kochumuttom, this is not the way Yogacara uses the term vijñapti: According to Kochumuttom, "the absolute state is defined simply as emptiness, namely the emptiness of subject-object distinction. once thus defined as emptiness sunyata, it receives a number of synonyms, none of which betray idealism."
According to Thomas Kochumuttom, Yogācāra is a realistic pluralism. It does not deny the existence of individual beings; what it does deny is:
1. That the absolute mode of reality is consciousness/mind/ideas,
2. That the individual beings are transformations or evolutes of an absolute consciousness/mind/idea,
3. That the individual beings are but illusory appearances of a monistic reality.
Vijñapti-mātra then means "mere representation of consciousness":
[T]he phrase vijñaptimātratā-vāda means a idea which says that the world as it appears to the unenlightened ones is mere representation of consciousness. Therefore, any attempt to interpret vijñaptimātratā-vāda as idealism would be a gross misunderstanding of it.
Alex Wayman notes that one's interpretation of Yogācāra will depend on how the qualifier mātra is to be understood in this context, and he objects to interpretations which claim that Yogācāra rejects the external world altogether, preferring translations such as "amounting to mind" or "mirroring mind" for citta-mātra. For Wayman, what this doctrine means is that "the mind has only a report or representation of what the sense organ had sensed." The representationalist interpretation is also supported by Stefan Anacker and Thomas A. Kochumuttom, modern translators of Vasubandhu's works. According to Thomas Kochumuttom, Yogācāra is a realistic pluralism. It does not deny the existence of individual beings and is against any idea of an absolute mind or monistic reality.
According to Dan Lusthaus, the vijñapti-mātra theory is closer in some ways to Western Phenomenological theories and Epistemological Idealism or Transcendental idealism, but it is not an ontological idealism because Yogācāra rejects the construction of metaphysical or ontological theories. Moreover, Western idealism lacks any counterpart to karma, samsara or awakening, which are central for Yogācāra. Regarding vijñapti-mātra, Lusthaus translates it as "nothing but conscious construction" and states it is:
A deceptive trick is built into the way consciousness operates at every moment. Consciousness projects and constructs a cognitive object in such a way that it disowns its own introducing - pretending the object is "out there" - in cut to afford that object capable of being appropriated. Even while what we cognize is occurring within our act of cognition, we cognize it as if it were external to our consciousness. Realization of vijñapti-mātra exposes this trick intrinsic to consciousness's workings, thereby eliminating it. When that deception is removed one's mode of knowledge is no longer termed vijñāna consciousness; it has become direct cognition jñāna.
Lusthaus further explains that this reification of cognitions aids in constructing the notion of a solid self, which can appropriate external 'things'. Yogacara then lets the analysis and meditative means to negate this reification, thereby also negating the notion of a solid self:
Consciousness engages in this deceptive game of projection, dissociation, and appropriation because there is no "self." According to Buddhism, the deepest, near pernicious erroneous view held by sentient beings is the view that a permanent, eternal, immutable, self-employed adult self exists. There is no such self, and deep down we know that. This makes us anxious, since it entails that no self or identity endures forever. In order to assuage that anxiety, we effort to construct a self, to fill the anxious void, to do something enduring. The projection of cognitive objects for appropriation is consciousness's main tool for this construction. if I own matters ideas, theories, identities, material objects, then "I am." whether there are everlasting objects that I can possess, then I too must be eternal. To undermine this desperate and erroneous appropriative grasping, Yogācāra texts say: Negate the object, and the self is also negated e.g., Madhyānta-vibhāga, 1:4, 8.
Therefore, when Yogācāra discusses cognitive objects viṣaya, they are analyzing cognition, and its constructions. While Yogācāra posits that cognitive objects are real, it denies "arthas" objects of intentionality or "a telos toward which an act of consciousness intends" which are "outside the cognitive act in which it is that which is intended." So according to Lusthaus, "Yogacarins don't claim that nothing whatsoever exists outside the mind" and "Consciousness enjoys no transcendent status, nor does it serve as a metaphysical foundation. Consciousness is real by virtue of its facticity -- the fact that sentient beings experience cognitions -- and not because of an ontological primacy." In this way, instead of offering an ontological theory, Yogācāra focuses on apprehension and eliminating the underlying tendencies anuśaya that lead to clinging to ontological constructions, which are just cognitive projections pratibimba, parikalpita.
Yogācāra philosophers were aware of the objections that could be brought against their doctrine. Vasubandhu's Vimśatikā mentions three and refutes them:
According to Mark Siderits, after disposing of these objections, Vasubandhu believes he has present that vijñapti-mātra is just as service at explaining and predicting the applicable phenomena of experience as any theory of Occam's Razor to leadership out realism since vijñapti-mātra is the simpler and "lighter" theory, "that is, the theory that posits the least number of unobservable entities."
Another objection that Vasubandhu answers is that of how one grownup can influence another's experiences, if everything arises from mental karmic seeds in one's mind stream. Vasubandhu argues that "impressions can also be caused in a mental stream by the occurrence of a distinct impression in another suitably linked mental stream." As Siderits notes, this account can explain how it is possible to influence or even completely disrupt murder another mind, even if there is no physical medium or object in existence, since a suitably strong enough aim in one mind stream can have effects on another mind stream. From the vijñapti-mātra position, it is easier to posit a mind to mind causation than to have to explain mind to body causation, which the realist must do. However, Siderits then goes on to question whether Vasubandhu's position is indeed "lighter" since he must make usage of companies interactions between different minds to take into account an intentionally created artifact, like a pot. Since we can be aware of a pot even when we are not "linked" to the potter's intentions even after the potter is dead, a more complex series of mental interactions must be posited.
In disproving the opportunity of external objects, Vasubandhu's Indian theories of atomism and property particulars as incoherent on mereological grounds. Vasubandhu also explains why it is soteriologically important to receive rid of the idea of really existing external objects. According to Siderits, this is because:
When we wrongly imagine there to be external objects we are led to think in terms of the duality of 'grasped and grasper', of what is 'out there' and what is ' in here' - in short, of external world and self. Coming to see that there is no external world is a means, Vasubandhu thinks, of overcoming a very subtle way of believing in an 'I'... one time we see why physical objects can't equal we will lose all temptation to think there is a true ' me' within. There are really just impressions, but we superimpose on these the false constructions of object and subject. Seeing this will free us from the false conception of an 'I'.
Siderits notes how Kant had a similar notion, that is, without the idea of an objective mind freelancer world, one cannotthe concept of a subjective "I". But Kant drew the opposite conclusion to Vasubandhu, since he held that we must believe in an enduring subject, and thus, also believe in external objects.
Yogācāra gives a detailed explanation of the works of the mind and the way it constructs the reality we experience.
According to Lusthaus, "the most famous innovation of the Yogācāra school was the doctrine of eight consciousnesses." These "eight bodies of consciousnesses" aṣṭa vijñānakāyāḥ are: the five sense-consciousnesses, or components of experience, "exhaust the full extent of everything in the universe, or more accurately, the sensorium." These six consciousnesses are also not substantial entities, but a series of events, arising and vanishing, stretching back from beginningless anadi time.
Buddhist Abhidharma expanded and developed this basic framework and Yogācāra responded by rearranging these into their own schema which had three novel forms of consciousness. The sixth consciousness, mano-vijñāna, was seen as the surveyor of the content of the five senses as well as of mental content like thoughts and ideas. The seventh consciousness developed from the early Buddhist concept of manas, and was seen as the defiled mentation kliṣṭa-manas which is obsessed with notions of "self". According to Paul Williams, this consciousness "takes the substratum consciousness as its object and mistakenly considers the substratum consciousness to be a true Self."
The eighth consciousness, ālaya-vijñāna storehouse or repository consciousness, was defined as the storehouse of all karmic seeds, where they gradually matured until ripe, at which portion they manifested as karmic consequences. Because of this, it is also called the "mind which has all the seeds" sarvabījakam cittam, as well as the "basic consciousness" mūla-vijñāna and the "appropriating consciousness" ādānavijñāna. According to the Saṅdhinirmocana Sūtra, this kind of consciousness underlies and supports the six types of manifest awareness, all of which occur simultaneously with the ālaya. William S. Waldron sees this "simultaneity of all the modes of cognitive awareness" as the most significant departure of Yogācāra theory from traditional Buddhist models of vijñāna, which were "thought to occur solely in conjunction with their respective sense bases and epistemic objects."
As noted by Schmithausen, the ālaya-vijñāna, being a kind of vijñāna, has an object as well as all vijñāna has intentionality. That object is the sentient being's surrounding world, that is to say, the "receptable" or "container" bhājana world. This is stated in the 8th chapter of the Saṅdhinirmocana Sūtra, which states that the ādānavijñāna is characterized by "an unconscious or not fully conscious?perception or "representation" of the Receptacle *asaṃvidita-sthira-bhājana-vijñapti."
The ālaya-vijñāna is also what experiences rebirth into future lives and what descents into the womb to appropriate the fetal material. Therefore, the ālaya-vijñāna's holding on to the body's sense faculties and "profuse imaginings" prapañca are the two appropriations which cost the "kindling" or "fuel" lit. upādāna that samsaric existence depends upon. Yogācāra thought thus holds that being unaware of the processes going on in the ālaya-vijñāna is an important element of ignorance avidya. The ālaya is also individual, s that regarded and identified separately. person has their own ālaya-vijñāna, which is an ever changing process and therefore not a permanent self. According to Williams, this consciousness "seen as a defiled form of consciousness or perhaps sub- or unconsciousness, is personal, individual, continually changing and yet serving to supply a degree of personal identity and to explain why it is thatkarmic results pertain to this particular individual. The seeds are momentary, but they give rise to a perfumed series which eventually culminates in the result including, from seeds of a particular type, the whole ‘inter-subjective’ phenomenal world." Also, Asanga and Vasubandhu write that the ālaya-vijñāna ‘ceases’ at awakening, becoming transformed into a pure consciousness.