Yogācāra

Yogācāra. (Skt.) The ‘practice of yoga’, a major Mahāyāna school that emerged in the 4th century ce, viewed by its founders as a corrective to epistemological and soteriological difficulties inherent in later Madhyamaka. The school is also known as Vijñānavāda (‘the Way of Consciousness’), alluding to its epistemological interests. The term citta-mātra (‘mere mind’) is also sometimes incorrectly applied to it through the influence of Tibetan doxological traditions.

The origins of the Yogācāra school are shrouded in mystery though recent research suggests that it had definite links with the Gandhāra school of the Sarvāstivāda—also known as Sautrāntika or Mūla-sarvāstivāda—which did not accept the authority and theories of the Vibhāṣā literature produced by the Kashmiri branch of the Sarvāstivāda. The founders of the school were Maitreyanātha, Asaṅga and Vasubandhu, each contributing innovative nuances, with important additions from later commentators such as Sthiramati and Dharmapāla. Yogācāra flourished in India until the 8th century ce when it gradually merged with a modified form of Svātantrika-Madhyamaka, thus combining the best elements of the two schools. Other later members of the Yogācāra school, such as Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, also made seminal contributions to the development of Buddhist logic (pramāṇa). Yogācāra was transmitted to China through the efforts of Paramārtha and Hsüan-tsang, the latter being responsible for the introduction of Dharmapāla's idealistic and ontological interpretation through his teacher Śīlabhadra. Yogācāra was also introduced and widely studied in Tibet but its accurate understanding there has been seriously compromised by the predominant Madhyamaka bias reflected in Tibetan traditional doxology.

The key scriptural basis for Yogācāra theories is the Sandhi-nirmocana Sūtra with earlier adumbrations in the Daśabhūmika Sūtra and the Avataṃsaka Sūtra. Sometimes the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra is erroneously cited as a Yogācāra work but this late syncretic text, which combines tathāgata-garbha concepts with elements of Yogācāra theory, was unknown to the founders of Yogācāra and thus should not be counted among the school's authentic works. Works variously attributed to Maitreyanātha, Asaṅga and Vasubandhu include the Abhidharma-samuccaya, the Dharma-dharmatā-vibhāga, the Madhyānta-vibhāga-kārikā, the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha, the Mahāyāna-sūtrālaṃkāra, the Tri-svabhāva-nirdeśa, the Triṃśikā, the Viṃśatikā and the encyclopaedic Yogācārabhūmi Śāstra.

Yogācāra thought arguably represents the most complex and sophisticated philosophy developed by Indian Buddhism but this richness has led to considerable difficulties in accurately evaluating its doctrines. Through a neglect of research based on the authentic Yogācāra texts combined with the distortions found in east Asian and Tibetan secondary literature, itself largely based on late Yogācāra trends, it was common to see Yogācāra as a Buddhist form of idealism but this understanding is gradually being revealed as misleading and inadequate by a new generation of scholars who suggest that early Yogācāra is actually an epistemological rather than ontological system.

As its name suggests, the central Yogācāra doctrines and theories derive particularly from meditational experiences and concern two key interconnected themes—: the nature of the mind and the nature of experience. To account for all aspects and functions of the mind, eight aspects or modes of consciousness were distinguished—the ālaya-vijñāna, the afflicted mind (kliṣṭa-manas) and the traditional six perceptual consciousnesses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch and thought. As long as unenlightened beings undergo rebirth in saṃsāra, a stream of imprints (bīja or vāsanā) derived from experiences and actions are implanted in their minds, lying dormant until suitable circumstances occur for them to manifest their content in the form of the delusory dualism of the experiencing subject and experienced objects.

The aspect of the mind involved in this process is the substratum or storehouse consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna) which, through the effects of these imprints, also gives rise sequentially to further modes of subjective consciousness as well as their perceived contents. These are the afflicted mind (kliṣṭa-manas) which generates the idea of a self (ātman) through its indistinct awareness of the ālaya-vijñāna and taints the remaining six consciousness with cognitive and emotional distortions that predispose a being to the creation of further imprints. In this way, all unenlightened experience is fabricated by the various aspects of the mind as it generates a false self and projects delusory objects onto reality. The ontological nature of reality is not discussed although it is clear from early Yogācāra texts that the bare objects (vastu-mātra) which comprise reality were thought to exist independently of the individual, though they are never directly experienced by the dualistic minds of the unenlightened. The manner in which beings experience the world is further described in detail by means of the innovative Yogācāra doctrine of the ‘three natures’ (tri-svabhāva)— the imagined (parikalpita), the dependent (paratantra) and the consummate natures (pariniṣpanna).

When all the implanted unwholesome predispositions have been eliminated from an individual's ālaya-vijñāna and the false dualism of a perceiving self and perceived objects utterly abandoned at the moment of enlightenment or nirvāṇa, a radical transformation occurs in which various aspects of the mind change into the Buddha Awarenesses (buddha-jñāna)—the ālaya-vijñāna becomes the Mirror-like Awareness, the afflicted mind becomes the Awareness of Sameness, thought consciousness (mano-vijñāna) become Investigating Awareness and the remaining perceptual consciousnesses become the Accomplishing Activity Awareness. Each of these Awarenesses is a facet of enlightenment and, unlike the ordinary consciousnesses, are non-conceptualizing and non-dual, able to experience reality directly and authentically.

The Yogācāra school also made major contributions to Buddhology by refining the theories concerning the ‘three bodies’ (trikāya) and the Five Awarenesses; to soteriology through the Five Stage Path (see mārga); and to hermeneutics through the doctrine of three turnings of the wheel.