ASA?GA

Asa?ga (ca. 320–ca. 390) is regarded as the founder of the Yog?c?ra tradition of Mh?y?na philosophy. His biography reports that he was born in Puru?apura, India, and converted to Mah?y?na from the H?nay?na, later convincing his brother Vasubandhu to make the same move. Together they systematized the teachings of Yog?c?ra, authoring the main Yog?c?ra commentaries and treatises. Asa?ga's many works include Abhidharmasamuccaya (A Compendium of Abhi-dharma), which presents and defines technical terms and usages, and the X?anyang shengjiao lun, extant only in Chinese translation, a text that summarizes the truly compendious Yog?c?rabh?mi (Stages of Yogic Practice), with which he is also connected as author/editor. Other commentaries are attributed to him on important Yog?c?ra and some Prajñ?p?ramit? and Madhyamaka works as well. By far his principal work is the Mah?y?nasa?graha (Summary of the Great Vehicle), in which he presents the tenets of Yog?c?ra in clear and systematic fashion, moving step by step, first explaining the basic notion of the storehouse consciousness and its functional relationship to the mental activities of sensing, perceiving, and thinking, then outlining the structure of consciousness in its three patterns of the other-dependent (dependent arising applied to the very structure of consciousness), the imagined, and the perfected, which is the other-dependent emptied of clinging to the imagined. He then sketches how the Asan mind constructs its world; he develops a critical philosophy of mind that, in place of abhidharma's naive realism, can understand understanding, reject its imagined pattern, and—having attained the perfected state of ??nyat? (emptiness)—engage in other-dependent thinking and action. Asa?ga thereby reaffirms the conventional value of theory, which had appeared to be disallowed by earlier Madhyamaka dialectic. He treats the practices conducive to awakening (perfections, stages, discipline, concentration, and nonimaginative wisdom) and finally turns to the abandonment of delusion and the realization of buddhahood as the three bodies of awakening. Asa?ga's work is a compendium of critical Yog?c?ra understanding of the mind.

See also:Consciousness, Theories of; Madhyamaka School; Yog?c?ra School

Bibliography

Keenan, John P., trans. The Summary of the Great Vehicle by Bodhisattva Asa? ga (Translated from the Chinese of Param?rtha). Berkeley, CA: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 1992.

Lamotte, Étienne, ed. and trans. La Somme du Grand Véhicule d'Asa?ga (Mah?y?nasamgraha), Vol. 1: Version tibétaine et chinoise (Hiuan-tsang); Vol. 2: Traduction et commentaire. Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 1938–39. Reprint, 1973.

Rahula, Walpola, ed. and trans. Le compendium de la super-doctrine (Abhidharmasamuccaya) d'Asa?ga. Paris: École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 1971. Reprint, 1980.

John P. Keenan