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Yogācāra (Sanskrit; literally: "yoga practice"; "one whose practice is yoga")[1] is an influential school of Buddhist philosophy and psychology emphasizing phenomenology and (some argue) ontology[2] through the interior lens of meditative and yogic practices. It developed within Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism in about the 4th century CE.[3] Yogācāra discourse is founded on the existential truth of the human condition: there is nothing that humans experience that is not mediated by mind.
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Yogācāra is also transliterated (using standard English alphabet) as "yogachara". Another name for the school is Vijñānavāda (Sanskrit). Vāda means "doctrine" and "way"; vijñāna means "consciousness" and "discernment."
The Yogācāra is, along with the Mādhyamaka, one of the two principal schools of Nepalese and Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism.[4]
Masaaki (2005) states: "[a]ccording to the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra, the first Yogācāra text, the Buddha set the 'wheel of the doctrine' (Dharmacakra) in motion three times."[4] Hence, the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra, as the doctrinal trailblazer of Yogācāra, inaugurated the paradigm of the three turnings of the wheel of Dharma, with its own tenets in the "third turning". The Yogācāra texts are generally considered part of the third turning along with the relevant sutra.[5] Moreover, Yogācāra discourse surveys and synthesizes all three turnings.
The origins of the scholarly Indian Yogācāra tradition were rooted in the syncretic scholasticism of Nālandā University, where the doctrine of consciousness-only (vijñapti-mātra or cittamātra) was first extensively propagated. Doctrines, tenets and derivatives of this school have influenced and become well-established in China, Korea, Tibet, Japan and Mongolia and throughout the world via the dissemination and dialogue wrought by the Buddhist diaspora.
The orientation of the Yogācāra school is largely consistent with the thinking of the Pāli Nikāyas. It frequently treats later developments in a way that realigns them with earlier versions of Buddhist doctrines. Dan Lusthaus concludes that one of the agendas of the Yogācāra school was to reorient the complexity of later refinements in Buddhist philosophy to accord with early Buddhist doctrine.[6]
Yogācāra, which had its genesis in the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra, was largely formulated by the brahmin born half-brothers Vasubandhu and Asaṅga (who was said to be inspired by the quasihistorical Maitreya-nātha, or the divine Maitreya). This school held a prominent position in the Indian scholastic tradition for several centuries due to its lauded pedigree and propagation at Nālandā.
As evidenced by Tibetan sources, this school was in protracted dialectic with the Mādhyamaka. However, there is disagreement among contemporary Western and traditional Buddhist scholars about the degree to which they were opposed, if at all.[7] To summarize the main difference in a way so brief as to risk the accusation of inaccuracy, while the Mādhyamaka held that asserting the existence or non-existence of any ultimately real thing was inappropriate, some exponents of Yogācāra asserted that the mind (or in the more sophisticated variations, primordial wisdom) and only the mind is ultimately real. Not all Yogācārins, however, asserted that mind was truly existent. According to some interpretations, Vasubandhu and Asaṅga in particular did not.[8]
Later Yogācāra exponents synthesized the two views, particularly Śāntarakṣita, whose view was later called "Yogācāra-Svatantrika-Mādhyamaka" by the Tibetan tradition. In his view the Mādhyamika position is ultimately true and at the same time the mind-only view is a useful way to relate to conventionalities and progress students more skillfully toward the ultimate.[9] This synthesized view between the two positions, which also incorporated views of valid cognition from Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, was one of the last developments of Indian Buddhism before it was extinguished in the 11th century during the Muslim incursion. It was also expounded by Xuanzang, who after a suite of debates with exponents of the Mādhyamaka School, composed in Sanskrit the no longer extant three-thousand verse treatise The Non-difference of Mādhyamaka and Yogācāra.[10]
Later Yogācāra teachings are especially important in tantric Buddhism, which evolved along with their development in India.
Yogācāra was transmitted to Tibet by Śāntarakṣita and later by Atiśa; it was thereafter integral to Tibetan Buddhism although the prevailing Geluk-dominated view held that it was less definitive than Mādhyamaka. Yogācāra terminology (but not view) is used by the Nyingmapa and its zenith, Dzogchen. Yogācāra also became central to East Asian Buddhism. The teachings of Yogācāra became the Chinese Wei Shi school of Buddhism.
Current debates among Tibetan schools between the shentong (empty of other) and rangtong (empty of self) views appear similar to earlier debates between Yogācāra and Mādhyamaka, but the issues and distinctions have evolved further. Though the later Tibetan views could be said to have evolved from the earlier Indian positions, the distinctions between the views became increasingly subtle, especially after Yogācāra incorporated the Mādhyamika view of the ultimate. Ju Mipham, the 19th century rime movement commenter, wrote in his commentary on Śāntarakṣita's synthesis, that the ultimate view in both schools is the same and each path also leads to the same ultimate state of abiding.[9]
By the closure of the Sui Dynasty (589-618), Buddhism in China had developed many distinct schools and traditions. Xuanzang, in the words of Dan Lusthaus:
...came to the conclusion that the many disputes and interpretational conflicts permeating Chinese Buddhism were the result of the unavailability of crucial texts in Chinese translation. In particular, he [Xuanzang] thought that a complete version of the Yogācārabhūmi Śāstra, an encyclopedic description of the stages of the Yogācāra path to Buddhahood written by Asaṅga, would resolve all the conflicts. In the 6th century an Indian missionary named Paramārtha (another major translator) had made a partial translation of it. Xuanzang resolved to procure the full text in India and introduce it to China.[10]
Moreover, Dan Lusthaus charts the different dialectic and divergent traditions of Buddhism within India and China discovered by Xuanzang and mentions the Buddha-nature, Awakening of Faith, and Tathāgatagarbha:
Xuanzang also discovered that the intellectual context in which Buddhists disputed and interpreted texts was much vaster and more varied than the Chinese materials had indicated: Buddhist positions were forged in earnest debate with a range of Buddhist and non-Buddhist doctrines unknown in China, and the terminology of these debates drew their significance and connotations from this rich context. While in China Yogācāra thought and Tathāgata-garbha thought were becoming inseparable, in India orthodox Yogācāra seemed to ignore if not outright reject Tathāgata-garbha thought. Many of the pivotal notions in Chinese Buddhism (e.g., Buddha-nature) and their cardinal texts (e.g., The Awakening of Faith) were completely unknown in India.[10]
Principal exponents of Yogācāra categorized and alphabetized according to location:
The Unravelling the Mystery of Thought Sutra (Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra, 2nd century CE) was the seminal Yogācāra sutra and continued to be a primary referent for the tradition. Also containing Yogācāra elements were the Pratyutpanna Samādhi Sūtra (1st century CE) and Daśabhūmika Sūtra (pre-3rd century CE).[11] The later Descent into Laṅkā Sūtra (Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, 4th century CE) also assumed considerable importance.[12] Other prominent Yogācāra sutras include the Śrīmālādevīsiṃhanāda Sūtra and the Ghanavyūha Sūtra.[13]
Among the most important texts to the Yogācāra tradition to be the Five Treatises of Maitreya. These texts are said to have been related to Asaṅga by the Bodhisattva Maitreya. They are as follows:
A commentary on the Ornament for Clear Realization called "Clarifying the Meaning" by Haribhadra is also often used, as is one by Vimuktisena.
Most of these texts were also incorporated into the Chinese tradition, which was established several centuries earlier than the Tibetan. However, the Ornament for Clear Realization is not mentioned by Chinese translators up to the 7th century, including Xuanzang, who was an expert in this field. This suggests it may possibly have emerged from a later period than is generally ascribed to it.
Vasubandhu wrote three foundational texts of the Yogācāra: the Treatise on the Three Natures (Sanskrit: Trisvabhāva-nirdeśa, Tib. Rang-bzhin gsum nges-par bstan), the Treatise in Twenty Stanzas (Skt: Viṃśaṭikā-kārikā) and the Treatise in Thirty Stanzas (S: Triṃśikaikā-kārikā). He also wrote an important commentary on the Madhyantavibhaṅga. According to Buddhist scholar Jay Garfield:
While the Trisvabhāva-nirdeśa is arguably the most philosophically detailed and comprehensive of the three short works on this topic composed by Vasubandu, as well as the clearest, it is almost never read or taught in contemporary traditional cultures or centers of learning. The reason may be simply that this is the only one of Vasubandhu’s root texts for which no autocommmentary exists. For this reason, none of Vasubandhu’s students composed commentaries on the text and hence there is no recognized lineage of transmission for the text. So nobody within the Tibetan tradition (the only extant Mahāyāna scholarly tradition) could consider him or herself authorized to teach the text. It is therefore simply not studied, a great pity. It is a beautiful and deep philosophical essay and an unparalleled introduction to the Cittamatra system.[14]
Authorship of critical Yogācāra texts is also ascribed to Asaṅga personally (in contrast to the Five Treatises of Maitreya). Among them are the Mahāyāna-saṃgraha and the Abhidharma-samuccaya. Sometimes also ascribed to him is the Yogācārabhūmi Śāstra, a massive encyclopedic work considered the definitive statement of Yogācāra, but most scholars believe it was compiled a century later, in the 5th century.
Other important commentaries on various Yogācāra texts were written by Sthiramati (6th century) and Dharmapāla (7th century), and an influential Yogācāra-Mādhyamaka synthesis was formulated by Śāntarakṣita (8th century).
Charles Muller, a contemporary Yogācāra scholar, remarks that "when Yogācāra specialists take on the task of trying to introduce the tradition to newcomers and non-specialists, whether it be in a book-length project, or an article in a reference work, they inevitably choose different points of departure, depending on their particular approach to understanding Yogācāra, and Buddhism in general. Some will start with the explanation of the eight consciousnesses; some will start with the four parts of cognition; some will start with the three natures; others will start with the doctrine of no-self, and so on. There is no special need to try to assess whether one of these approaches is better than the other, for indeed, in the vast and complex system that is known as Yogācāra, all of these different approaches and categories are ultimately tied into each other, and thus, starting with any one of them, one can eventually enter into all of the rest."[15]
Hattori Masaaki (2005) states:
[Yogācāra] attaches importance to the religious practice of yoga as a means for attaining final emancipation from the bondage of the phenomenal world. The stages of yoga are systematically set forth in the treatises associated with this tradition.[4]
Keenan, et al. (2003) states:
...the Yogācāra thinkers did not simply comment on Mādhyamika thought. They attempted to ground insight into emptiness in a critical understanding of the mind, articulated in a sophisticated theoretical discourse.[16]
Yogācārins developed an Abhidharma literature set within a Mahāyāna framework.[17]
One of the main features of Yogācāra philosophy is the concept of consciousness-only (cittamātra or vijñapti-mātra). That term was used in Tibet and East Asia interchangeably with "Yogācāra", although modern scholars believe it is inaccurate to conflate the two terms.
The Yogācārins defined three basic modes by which we perceive our world. These are referred to in Yogācāra as the three natures of perception. They are:
Also, regarding perception, the Yogācārins emphasized that our everyday understanding of the existence of external objects is problematic, since in order to perceive any object (and thus, for all practical purposes, for the object to "exist"), there must be a sensory organ as well as a correlative type of consciousness to allow the process of cognition to occur.
Perhaps the best known teaching of the Yogācāra system is that of the eight types of consciousness (Sanskrit: aṣṭa-vijñāna). This theory of the consciousnesses attempted to explain all the phenomena of cyclic existence, including how rebirth occurs and precisely how karma functions on an individual basis. It addressed questions that had long vexed Buddhist philosophers, such as, if one carries out a good or evil act, why and how is it that the effects of that act do not appear immediately? Inasfar as they do not appear immediately, where is this karma waiting for its opportunity to play out?
The answer given by the Yogācārins, those that hold to the tenets of Yogācāra, was the store consciousness (Sanskrit: ālayavijñāna), also known as the basal, or eighth consciousness. It simultaneously acts as a storage place for karmic latencies and as a fertile matrix of predispositions that bring karma to a state of fruition. It may be ultimately traceable to the "luminous mind" mentioned once in the Āgamas. The likeness of this process to the cultivation of plants led to the creation of the metaphor of seeds (Sanskrit: bīja) to explain the way karma is stored in the eighth consciousness. In the Yogācāra formulation, all experience without exception is said to result from the ripening of karma[18]--the seemingly external world is merely a "by-product" (adhipati-phala) of karma. The term vāsanā ("perfuming") is also used, and Yogācārins debated whether vāsāna and bija were essentially the same, the seeds were the effect of the perfuming, or whether the perfuming simply affected the seeds.[19] The type, quantity, quality and strength of the seeds determine where and how a sentient being will be reborn: one's race, sex, social status, proclivities, bodily appearance and so forth. The conditioning of the mind resulting from karma is called saṃskāra.[20] The store consciousness concept developed along with the Buddha nature doctrine and resolved into the concept of mindstream or the "consciousness-continuity" (Sanskrit: citta-santāna)[21] to avoid being denounced as running counter to the doctrine of emptiness (śūnyatā) and the tenets of selflessness (anātman).
The Treatise on Action (Karmasiddhiprakaraṇa), also by Vasubandhu, treats the subject of karma in detail from the Yogācāra perspective.[22]
According to Walpola Rahula, all the elements of the Yogācāra storehouse-consciousness are already found in the Pāli Canon.[23] He writes that the three layers of the mind (citta, manas, and vijñana) as presented by Asaṅga are also mentioned in the Pāli Canon: "Thus we can see that 'Vijñāna' represents the simple reaction or response of the sense organs when they come in contact with external objects. This is the uppermost or superficial aspect or layer of the 'Vijñāna-skandha'. 'Manas' represents the aspect of its mental functioning, thinking, reasoning, conceiving ideas, etc. 'Citta' which is here called 'Ālayavijñāna', represents the deepest, finest and subtlest aspect or layer of the Aggregate of consciousness. It contains all the traces or impressions of the past actions and all good and bad future possibilities."[24]
Additionally, according to scholar Roger R. Jackson, a "'fundamental unconstructed awareness' (mūla-nirvikalpa-jñāna)" is "described . . . frequently in Yogacara literature."[25]
The doctrine of emptiness (Sanskrit: śūnyatā) is central to Yogācāra, as to any Mahāyāna school. Early Yogācāra texts, such as the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra and the Yogācārabhūmi Śāstra, often act as explanations of the Prajñāpāramitā sūtras. Keenan (2003) holds that emptiness, dependent arising (pratītyasamutpāda) and the doctrine of two truths are central in Yogācāra thought and meditation.[16]
As one Buddhologist puts it, "Although meaning 'absence of inherent existence' in Mādhyamaka, to the Yogācārins [emptiness] means 'absence of duality between perceiving subject [grāhaka, 'dzin-pa] and the perceived object [grāhya, bzhung-ba].'"[26]
This is not the full story however, as each of the three natures (above), has its corresponding "absence of nature". i.e.:
Each of these "absences" is a form of emptiness, i.e. the nature is "empty" of the particular qualified quality.
Yogācāra gave special significance to the Lesser Discourse on Emptiness of the Āgamas.[27] A passage there (which the discourse itself emphasizes) is often quoted in later Yogācāra texts as a true definition of emptiness.[28]
As the name of the school suggests, meditation practice is central to the Yogācāra tradition. Practice manuals prescribe the practice of mindfulness of body, feelings, thoughts and dharmas in oneself and others, out of which an understanding of the non-differentiation of self and other is said to arise. This process is referred to in the Yogācāra tradition as "turning about in the basis" (Sanskrit: āśraya-parāvṛtti), the basis being the storehouse consciousness.
Accordiny to Lusthaus,[29] Étienne Lamotte, a famous student of Louis de La Vallée-Poussin, "...profoundly advanced Yogācāra studies, and his efforts remain unrivaled among Western scholars."
Yogācāra has also been identified in the western philosophical tradition as idealism, or more specifically subjective idealism. This equation was standard until recently, when it began to be challenged by scholars such as Kochumuttom, Anacker, Kalupahana, Dunne, Lusthaus, Powers, and Wayman.[30][8][31] Buddhist scholar Jay Garfield continues to uphold the equation of Yogācāra and idealism, however.[32] Yogācāra has also been aligned with phenomenalism. In modern western philosophical discourse, Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty have approached what western scholarship generally concedes to be a standard Yogācāra position.
There are two important aspects of the Yogācāra schemata that are of special interest to modern-day practitioners. One is that virtually all schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism came to rely on these Yogācāra explanations as they created their own doctrinal systems, including the Zen schools. For example, the early Zen tradition in China was sometimes referred to simply as the "Laṅkāvatāra school" (Ch. 楞伽宗, Léngqié Zōng), due to their strong association with the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra.[33] This sūtra draws heavily upon Yogācāra theories of the eight consciousnesses, especially the ālayavijñāna. Accounts recording the history of this early period are preserved in Records of the Laṅkāvatāra Masters (Ch. 楞伽師資記, Léngqié Shīzī Jì).
That the scriptural tradition of Yogācāra is not yet well-known among the community of western practitioners is perhaps attributable to the fact that most of the initial transmission of Buddhism to the west has been directly concerned with meditation and basic doctrines. However, within Tibetan Buddhism more and more western students are becoming acquainted with this school. Very little research in English has been carried out on the Chinese Yogācāra traditions.