IAST
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during ...
: '; literally "yoga practice"; "one whose practice is yoga") is an influential tradition of
Buddhist philosophy
Buddhist philosophy refers to the philosophical investigations and systems of inquiry that developed among various schools of Buddhism in India following the parinirvana of The Buddha and later spread throughout Asia. The Buddhist path combin ...
and psychology emphasizing the study of
cognition
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
,
perception
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...
, and
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
through the interior lens of meditative and yogic practices. It is also variously termed ''Vijñānavāda'' (the doctrine of consciousness), ''Vijñaptivāda'' (the doctrine of
idea
In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are the results of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of being ...
s or percepts) or ''Vijñaptimātratā-vāda'' (the doctrine of 'mere representation'), which is also the name given to its major epistemic theory. There are several interpretations of this main theory; while often regarded as a kind of
Idealism
In philosophy, the term idealism identifies and describes metaphysical perspectives which assert that reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely connected to ide ...
, critical scholars argue that it is closer to a kind of
phenomenology
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
or
representationalism
In the philosophy of perception and philosophy of mind, the question of direct or naïve realism, as opposed to indirect or representational realism, is the debate over the nature of conscious experience;Lehar, Steve. (2000)The Function of Consc ...
, aimed at deconstructing the reification of our perceptions.
According to
Dan Lusthaus
Dan Lusthaus is an American writer on Buddhism. He is a graduate of Temple University's Department of Religion, and is a specialist in '' Yogācāra''. The author of several articles and books on the topic, Lusthaus has taught at UCLA, Florida Sta ...
, this tradition developed "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." The 4th-century
Gandhara
Gandhāra is the name of an ancient region located in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, more precisely in present-day north-west Pakistan and parts of south-east Afghanistan. The region centered around the Peshawar Vall ...
Vasubandhu
Vasubandhu (; Tibetan: དབྱིག་གཉེན་ ; fl. 4th to 5th century CE) was an influential Buddhist monk and scholar from ''Puruṣapura'' in ancient India, modern day Peshawar, Pakistan. He was a philosopher who wrote commentary ...
, are considered the classic philosophers and systematizers of this school, along with its other founder, Maitreya.Siderits, Mark, ''Buddhism as philosophy'', 2017, p. 146.
It was associated with Indian
Mahayana Buddhism
''Mahāyāna'' (; "Great Vehicle") is a term for a broad group of Buddhist traditions, texts, philosophies, and practices. Mahāyāna Buddhism developed in India (c. 1st century BCE onwards) and is considered one of the three main existing bra ...
in about the fourth century, but also included non-Mahayana practitioners of the
Sautrāntika
The Sautrāntika or Sutravadin ( sa, सौत्रान्तिक, Suttavāda in Pali; ; ja, 経量部, Kyou Ryou Bu) were an early Buddhist school generally believed to be descended from the Sthavira nikāya by way of their immediate par ...
school. Yogācāra continues to be influential in
Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism (also referred to as Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Lamaism, Lamaistic Buddhism, Himalayan Buddhism, and Northern Buddhism) is the form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet and Bhutan, where it is the dominant religion. It is also in majo ...
and East Asian Buddhism. However, the uniformity of a single assumed "Yogācāra school" has been put into question.
Doctrine
Yogācāra philosophy is primarily meant to aid in the practice of
yoga
Yoga (; sa, योग, lit=yoke' or 'union ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consciou ...
and
meditation
Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique – such as mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity – to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally cal ...
and thus it also sets forth a systematic analysis of the
Mahayana
''Mahāyāna'' (; "Great Vehicle") is a term for a broad group of Buddhist traditions, texts, philosophies, and practices. Mahāyāna Buddhism developed in India (c. 1st century BCE onwards) and is considered one of the three main existing bra ...
Sarvāstivāda
The ''Sarvāstivāda'' (Sanskrit and Pali: 𑀲𑀩𑁆𑀩𑀢𑁆𑀣𑀺𑀯𑀸𑀤, ) was one of the early Buddhist schools established around the reign of Ashoka (3rd century BCE).Westerhoff, The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy ...
Abhidharma
The Abhidharma are ancient (third century BCE and later) Buddhist texts which contain detailed scholastic presentations of doctrinal material appearing in the Buddhist ''sutras''. It also refers to the scholastic method itself as well as the f ...
, to develop a new schema for spiritual practice.
According to Thomas Kochumuttom, Yogācāra is "meant to be an explanation of experience, rather than a system of
ontology
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
". For this reason, Yogācārins developed an
Abhidharma
The Abhidharma are ancient (third century BCE and later) Buddhist texts which contain detailed scholastic presentations of doctrinal material appearing in the Buddhist ''sutras''. It also refers to the scholastic method itself as well as the f ...
literature set within a Mahāyāna framework. In its analysis, 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
Trisvabhāva (Sanskrit; Chinese: 三性 or 三自性) or the three natures, is one of the key doctrines of the Yogācāra school of Buddhism. The concept of the three natures describes the three qualities that all phenomena possess, and can be fo ...
''), and
emptiness
Emptiness as a human condition is a sense of generalized boredom, social alienation and apathy. Feelings of emptiness often accompany dysthymia, depression, loneliness, anhedonia,
despair, or other mental/emotional disorders, including schizoid ...
. They form a complex system, and each can be taken as a point of departure for understanding Yogācāra.Muller, A. Charles (2005; 2007). ''Wonhyo's Reliance on Huiyuan in his Exposition of the Two Hindrances.'' (Published in Reflecting Mirrors: Perspectives on Huayan Buddhism. Imre Hamar, ed., Harrassowitz Verlag, 2007, p. 281-295.) Source (accessed: April 7, 2010)
The doctrine of ''Vijñapti-mātra''
One of the main features of Yogācāra philosophy is the concept of ''vijñapti-mātra''. It is often used interchangeably with the term ''citta-mātra'', but they have different meanings. The standard translation of both terms is "consciousness-only" or "mind-only." Several modern researchers object to this translation, and the accompanying label of "absolute idealism" or "idealistic monism". A better translation for ''vijñapti-mātra'' is ''representation-only'', while an alternative translation for ''citta'' (mind, thought) ''mātra'' (only, exclusively) has not been proposed.
Origins
According to
Lambert Schmithausen
Lambert Schmithausen (born 17 November 1939 in Cologne, Germany)
"On the Problem of the External World in the Ch'eng wei shih lun"
Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies 2005
(''Studia Philologica Buddhica'', Occasional Paper ...
, the earliest surviving appearance of this term is in chapter 8 of the '' Saṅdhinirmocana Sūtra,'' which has only survived in Tibetan and Chinese translations that differ in syntax and meaning. 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." The Buddha says they are not different, "Because these images are ''vijñapti-mātra."'' The text goes on to affirm that the same is true for objects of ordinary perception.
Regarding existing
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
sources, the term appears in the first verse of Vasubandhu's ''Vimśatikā'', which is a ''