What is and isn't Yogacara
Dan Lusthaus
Yogagara is one of the two schools of Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism. Its
founding is ascribed to two half brothers, Asanga and Vasubandhu,
but its basic tenets and doctrines were already in circulation for
at least a century before the brothers lived. Yogacara;ra focused
on the processes involved in cognition in order to overcome the
ignorance that prevents one from attaining liberation from the
karmic rounds of birth and death. Yogacara;rins' sustained
attention to issues such as cognition, consciousness, perception,
and epistemology, coupled with claims such as "external objects do
not exist," has led some to misinterpret Yogacara;ra as a form of
metaphysical idealism. They did not focus on consciousness to
assert it as ultimately real (Yogacara;ra claims consciousness is
only conventionally real since it arises from moment to moment due
to fluctuating causes and conditions), but rather because it is the
cause of the karmic problem they are seeking to eliminate.
Yogacara;ra introduced several important new doctrines to Buddhism,
including vijñapti-mātra (nothing but cognition), three
self-natures, three turnings of the Dharma-wheel, and a system of
eight consciousness (all explained below). Their close scrutiny of
cognition spawned two important developments: an elaborate
psychological therapeutic system that mapped out the problems in
cognition along with the antidotes to correct them, and an earnest
epistemological endeavor that led to some of the most sophisticated
work on perception and logic ever engaged in by Buddhists or
Indians.
1 Historical Overview
Though the founding of Yogacara;ra is traditionally ascribed to two
half-brothers, Asanga and Vasubandhu (fourth-fifth century C.E.),
most of its fundamental doctrines had already appeared in a number
of scriptures a century or more earlier, most notably the
Saddhinirmocana Sutra (Elucidating the Hidden Connections). Among
the key Yogacara;ra concepts introduced in the Sadhinirmocana Sutra
are the notions of "only-cognition" (vijñapti-mātra), three
self-natures (trisvabhāva), the ālaya-vijñāna (warehouse
consciousness), overturning the basis (āśraya-parāvṛtti), and the
theory of eight consciousnesses.
The Sadhinirmocana Sutra proclaimed its teachings to be the third
turning of the wheel of Dharma. Buddha lived ca. the fifth century
BCE, but Mahayana Sutras did not begin to appear until roughly five
hundred years later. New Mahāyāna Sūtras continued to be composed
for many centuries. Indian Mahayanists treated these Sutras as
documents that recorded actual discourses of the Buddha. By the
third or fourth century CE a wide and sometimes incommensurate
range of Buddhist doctrines had emerged, but whichever doctrines
appeared in Sūtras could be ascribed to the authority of Buddha
himself.
According to the earliest Pali Suttas, when Buddha became
enlightened he turned the wheel of Dharma, i.e., he began to teach
the path to enlightenment, the Dharma (Pali: Dhamma). While
Buddhists had always maintained that Buddha had geared specific
teachings to the specific capacities of specific audiences, the
Sadhinirmocana Sutra established the idea that Buddha had taught
significantly different doctrines to different audiences based on
their levels of understanding; and that these different doctrines
led from provisional antidotes (pratipakṣa) for certain wrong views
up to a comprehensive teaching that finally made explicit what was
only implicit in the earlier teachings. In its view, the first two
turnings of the wheel-the teachings of the Four Noble Truths in
Nikāya and Abhidharma Buddhism, and the teachings of the Madhyamaka
school, respectively-had expressed the Dharma through incomplete
formulations that required further elucidation (neyārtha) in order
to be properly understood and thus effective. The first turning, by
emphasizing entities (dharmas, aggregates, etc.) while "hiding"
emptiness, might lead one to hold a substantialistic view; the
second turning, by emphasizing negation while "hiding" the positive
qualities of the Dharma, might be misconstrued as nihilism. The
third turning was a middle way between these extremes that finally
made everything explicit (nītārtha). In order to leave nothing
hidden, the Yogacara;rins embarked on a massive, systematic
synthesis of all the Buddhist teachings that had preceded them,
scrutinizing and evaluating them down to the most trivial details
in an attempt to formulate the definitive (nitārtha) Buddhist
teaching. Stated another way, to be effective all of Buddhism
required a Yogacara;rin reinterpretation. Innovations in abhidharma
analysis, logic, cosmology, meditation methods, psychology,
philosophy, and ethics are among their most important
contributions.
Asanga's magnum opus, the Yogacararabhumi-Sutra (Treatise on the
Stages of Yoga Practice), is a comprehensive encyclopedia of
Buddhist terms and models (which draws heavily on the Agamas - the
Sanskrit counterpart of the Pali Nikayas), mapped out according to
his Yogacara;rin view of how one progresses along the stages of the
path to enlightenment. Vasubandhu's pre-Yogacara;rin magnum opus,
the Abhidharmakosa (Treasury of Abhidharma) also provides a
comprehensive, detailed overview of the Buddhist path with
meticuluous attention to nuances and differences of opinion on a
broad range of exacting topics.
Though both half brothers were born Brahmins, Asanga is believed to
have early on joined the Mahīśasikas, a non-Mahāyāna school of
Buddhism deeply steeped in the Āgamas. Asanga and Vasubandhu became
the first identifiable Yogacara;rins, each having initially been
devoted to other schools of Buddhism. Both were prolific authors,
though Asanga attributed a portion of his writings to Maitreya, the
Future Buddha living in Tusheeeta Heaven. Some modern scholars have
argued that this Maitreya was an actual human teacher, not the
Future Buddha, but the tradition is fairly clear. After twelve
years of fruitless meditation alone in a cave (or forest, according
to other versions), during a moment of utter despair when Asanga
was ready to quit due to his abject failure, Maitreya appeared to
him and transported him to Tusheeeta Heaven where he instructed him
in previously unknown texts, Yogacara;rin works, that Asanga then
introduced to his fellow Buddhists. Precisely which texts these are
is less clear, since the Chinese and Tibetan traditions assign
different works to Maitreya.
http://www.hm.tyg.jp/~acmuller/yogacara/articles/intro-uni.htm
