Vasubandhu (traditional Chinese: 世親; ; pinyin: Shìqīn; Tibetan: དབྱིག་གཉེན་ Wylie: dbyig gnyen; fl.

After his conversion to Mahayana Buddhism, along with his half-[citation needed]brother, Asanga, he was also one of the main founders of the Yogacara school.

However Vasubandhu had also begun to question Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāṣika view for some time, and had studied with the Sautrāntika teacher, Manoratha.

The Thirty Verses is the basis for Xuanzang's Cheng Wei Shi Lun, one of the most important sources in East Asian Yogacara Buddhism.

He is reported to have defeated Samkhya philosophers in debate in front of the Gupta king "Vikramaditya" (variously identified as Chandragupta II[15] or Skandagupta)[16] at Ayodhya, who is said to have rewarded him with 300,000 pieces of gold.

[17] Vasubandhu used the money he made from royal patronage and debating victories to build Buddhist monasteries and hospitals.

A list of his key works includes: Erich Frauwallner, a mid-20th-century Buddhologist, sought to distinguish two Vasubandhus, one the Yogācārin and the other a Sautrāntika, but this view has largely fallen from favour in part on the basis of the anonymous Abhidharma-dīpa, a critique of the Abhidharmakośakārikā which clearly identifies Vasubandhu as the sole author of both groups of writings.

[25] According to Dan Lusthaus, "Since the progression and development of his thought ... is so strikingly evident in these works, and the similarity of vocabulary and style of argument so apparent across the texts, the theory of Two Vasubandhus has little merit.

This argument is mainly against the Buddhist Pudgalavada school who held a view of a 'person' that was dependent on the five aggregates, yet was also distinct, in order to account for the continuity of personality.

Vasubandhu sees this as illogical: for him, the Self is made up of constantly changing sensory organs, sense impressions, ideas and mental processes.

Vasubandhu shows that the Hindu view of the Self as 'controller' is refuted by an analysis of the flux and disorder of mental events and the inability of the supposed Self to control our minds and thoughts in any way we would like.

If the Self is truly an eternal un-caused agent, it should be unaffected by mere physical and mental causes, and it also seems difficult to explain how such a force existing independently outside of the mind could causally interact with it.

[3] Vasubandhu also answers several common objections to the Buddhist not-self view such as how karma works without a Self and what exactly undergoes rebirth.

Vasubandhu points to the causal continuum of aggregates/processes which undergoes various changes leading to future karmic events and rebirth.

The Sarvāstivādin tradition which Vasubandhu studied held the view of the existence of dharmas (phenomenal events) in all three times (past, present, future).

The issue of continuity and transference of karma is explained in the latter text by an exposition of the "storehouse consciousness" (ālayavijñāna), which stores karmic seeds (bīja) and survives rebirth.

[30] The Twenty verses begins by stating: In Mahayana philosophy...[reality is] viewed as being consciousness-only...Mind (citta), thought (manas), consciousness (chit), and perception (pratyaksa) are synonyms.

Vasubandhu then turns to a mereological critique of physical theories, such as Buddhist atomism and Hindu Monism, showing that his appearance only view is much more parsimonious and rational.