Yogachara

Yogachara (Sanskrit: योगाचार, IAST: Yogācāra) is an influential tradition of Buddhist philosophy and psychology emphasizing the study of cognition, perception, and consciousness through the interior lens of meditation, as well as philosophical reasoning (hetuvidyā).

[1] The movement has been traced to the first centuries of the common era and seems to have developed as some yogis of the Sarvāstivāda and Sautrāntika traditions in north India adopted Mahayana Buddhism.

[9][10][11] Yogācāra works like the Saṅdhinirmocana Sūtra developed various core concepts such as vijñapti-mātra, the ālaya-vijñāna (store consciousness), the turning of the basis (āśraya-parāvṛtti), the three natures (trisvabhāva), and emptiness.

[16] The passage is depicted as a response by the Buddha to a question which asks "whether the images or replicas (*pratibimba) which are the object (*gocara) of meditative concentration (*samadhi), are different/separate (*bhinna) from the contemplating mind (*citta) or not."

"[18] Regarding existing Sanskrit sources, the term appears in the first verse of Vasubandhu's Vimśatikā (Twenty Verses), which states:[19] This [world] is vijñaptimātra, since it manifests itself as an unreal object (artha), just like the case of those with cataracts seeing unreal hairs in the moon and the like (vijñaptimātram evaitad asad arthāvabhāsanāt yathā taimirikasyāsat keśa candrādi darśanam).According to Mark Siderits, what Vasubandhu means here is that we are only ever aware of mental images or impressions which manifest themselves as external objects, but "there is actually no such thing outside the mind.

[13] The interpretation of Yogācāra as a type of idealism was standard until recently, when it began to be challenged by scholars such as Kochumuttom, Anacker, Kalupahana,[30] Dunne, Lusthaus,[1] Powers, and Wayman.

Thus, for Lusthaus, the orientation of the Yogācāra school is largely consistent with the thinking of the Pāli nikāyas and seeks to realign Mahayana with early Buddhist theory.

However, Siderits then goes on to question whether Vasubandhu's position is indeed "lighter" since he must make use of multiple interactions between different minds to take into account an intentionally created artifact, like a pot.

[50][40] In disproving the possibility of external objects, Vasubandhu's Vimśatikā similarly attacks Indian theories of atomism and property particulars as incoherent on mereological grounds.

[57] William S. Waldron sees this "simultaneity of all the modes of cognitive awareness" as the most significant departure of Yogācāra theory from traditional Buddhist models of vijñāna, which were "thought to occur solely in conjunction with their respective sense bases and epistemic objects".

[62][63] According to Waldron, while there were various similar concepts in other Buddhist Abhidharma schools which sought to explain karmic continuity, the ālaya-vijñāna is the most comprehensive and systematic.

[100] Against the radically anti-foundationalist interpretation of Madhyamaka, the classic Yogācāra position is that there is something (the dependent nature which is mere-consciousness) that "exists" (sat) independently of conceptual designation (prajñapti), and that it is this real thing (vāstu) which is said to be empty of duality and yet is a basis for all dualistic conceptions.

[101] Furthermore, Yogācāra thinkers like Asaṅga and Vasubandhu critiqued those who "adhere to non-existence" (nāstikas, vaināśkas, likely referring to certain Madhyamikas) because they saw them as straying into metaphysical nihilism (abhāvānta, see Vimśatikā v.

[105] Yogācārins further held that if all phenomena are equally conventional and unreal in the same way this would lead to laxity in ethics and in following the path, in other words to moral relativism.

[106] Madhyamaka thinkers like Bhaviveka, Candrakirti and Shantideva also critiqued Yogācāra views in their works for what they saw as an improper reification (samāropa) of mind and for a nihilistic denial of conventional truth.

Previous Abhidharma schools like the Sautrantika had developed theories of karma based on the notion of "seeds" (bījā) in the mind stream, which are unseen karmic habits (good and bad) which remain until they meet with the necessary conditions to manifest.

[1] Yogācāra then posited the "storehouse consciousness" as the container of the seeds, as the storage place for karmic latencies and as a fertile matrix of predispositions that bring karma to a state of fruition.

When the Warehouse Consciousness finally ceases it is replaced by the Great Mirror Cognition (Mahādarśa-jñāna) that sees and reflects things just as they are, impartially, without exclusion, prejudice, anticipation, attachment, or distortion.

..."purified" cognitions all engage the world in immediate and effective ways by removing the self-bias, prejudice, and obstructions that had prevented one previously from perceiving beyond one's own narcissistic consciousness.

[123] According to some scholars, this text can be traced to communities of yogācāras, which initially referred not to a philosophical school, but to groups of meditation specialists whose main focus was Buddhist yoga.

[124] Other Yogācāra texts which also discuss meditation and spiritual practice (and show some relationship with the YBh) include the Saṃdhinirmocanasūtra, the Madhyāntavibhāga, Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra, Dharmadharmatāvibhāga and Asanga's Mahāyānasaṃgraha.

[126] Yogācāra sources like the Abhidharmasamuccaya, the Chéng Wéishì Lùn and the commentaries to the Mahāyānasaṃgraha and the Mahāyānasūtrālamkāra also contain various descriptions of the main stages of the bodhisattva path.

[131] The aim of the bodhisattva's practice in the Bodhisattvabhūmi is the wisdom (prajñā) which realizes of the inexpressible Ultimate Reality (tathata) or the 'thing-in-itself (vastumatra), which is essenceless and beyond the duality (advaya) of existence (bhāva) and non-existence (abhāva).

"[141] Thus, the goal of meditation is a totally unified mind that goes beyond all concepts and language to directly know the undifferentiated "uniformity of phenomena" (dharmasamatāḥ) and the thing-in-itself, the supreme reality.

The term "yogācāra" (yoga practitioner) was originally used to refer to the Buddhist meditation adepts of the first centuries of the common era which were associated with the Sarvāstivāda and Sautrāntika traditions in north India (some of their key centers included Gandhara, Kashmir and Mathura).

Modern scholars like Florin Deleanu have suggested that some yogis in this north Indian Buddhist milieu gradually adopted Mahāyāna ideas, eventually developing into a separate movement (a process which was complete by the 5th century).

Modern scholars consider the Yogācārabhūmi to contain the work of several authors (mainly of a Mūlasarvāstivāda milieu), though it has traditionally been attributed in full to the bodhisattva Maitreya or to Asanga.

[168] Karl Brunnhölzl notes that this syncretic tendency also existed in Indian Yogācāra scholasticism, but that it only became widespread during the later tantric era (when Vajrayana became prominent) with the work of thinkers like Jñānaśrīmitra, Ratnākaraśānti, and Maitripa.

[182][184] Xuanzang composed the Cheng Weishi Lun (Discourse on the Establishment of Consciousness Only) which drew on many Indian sources and commentaries and became a central work of East Asian Yogācāra.

[203] The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra also later assumed considerable importance in East Asia, and portions of this text were considered by Étienne Lamotte as being contemporaneous with the Saṃdhinirmocana.