Yogacara Buddhism

The claim

The division into perceiving subject and perceived object is constructed rather than given. What is real is the transformation of consciousness; the duality is what has to be seen through.

What it held

Yogacara arose among meditators — the name means the practice of yoga — and its arguments have the character of reports as much as deductions. The dream argument is central: in a dream, objects appear vividly external and no external object is present, so vivid externality cannot be evidence of an object.

The school's most original construction is the storehouse consciousness. Beneath the six familiar consciousnesses and the seventh, which is the sense of I, lies a substratum in which seeds are deposited by every action and from which experience ripens. It explains continuity without a self, memory without a rememberer, and karma without anything to carry it.

The three natures give the framework: the constructed, which is the world as a subject-object split; the dependent, which is the flow of conditioned events; and the perfected, which is the dependent seen without the construction.

Whether this is idealism is genuinely disputed. Some passages read as denying external objects outright; others as denying only that objects are as we take them to be. Tibetan and East Asian traditions divide on the point, and modern scholars do too.

How it argued

Argument from the phenomenology of dreams and illusions, combined with the analysis of meditative states and a detailed theory of mental factors.

What it was arguing against

Realist accounts of external objects, and Madhyamaka's refusal to assert anything positive — the Yogacarins thought that left nothing to practise with.

Where it disagreed with itself

Whether the school is idealist or epistemic. Whether the storehouse consciousness is a self readmitted under another name, which Madhyamikas charged and Yogacarins denied.

Common misconceptions

That it is Berkeleyan idealism. The point of the arguments is soteriological — dismantling the subject-object grip — rather than establishing a metaphysical thesis about what exists, and many passages are careful to avoid the stronger claim.

How it began

Asanga and his half-brother Vasubandhu, the latter having written the great Abhidharma compendium first and converted afterwards, which shows in how thoroughly he knew what he was leaving.

What became of it

Living. Transformed into Faxiang in China and Hosso in Japan, and one of the two main philosophical streams in Tibetan Buddhism.

Lasting influence

Chan and Zen owe it their account of mind. Tibetan scholasticism argues Madhyamaka against Yogacara as its central debate. Buddhist logic, in Dignaga and Dharmakirti, grew out of this school.

Why it still matters

Its account of experience as constructed rather than received is close to what cognitive science now says, and the comparison has produced real work rather than only enthusiasm.

Put another way

A dream, in which everything is vividly outside and nothing is.

Where to start

The Twenty Verses. It is short, it is argumentative, and it takes the objections seriously.

The surprising bit

Vasubandhu wrote the definitive Abhidharma summary, then his brother converted him, and he wrote the definitive refutation of much of it. Both books are still studied, by people who disagree about which is right.

In their own words

Connections

Answers

Early Theravada Buddhism, Madhyamaka Buddhism

Opposed by

Nyaya, Madhyamaka Buddhism

Influenced

Chan (Zen) Buddhism (Chinese), Huayan Buddhism

The verdict

The most sophisticated account of mind produced in classical India, and still argued about in three languages.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy