Yogachara
Yogachara 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. Yogachara was one of the two most influential traditions of Mahayana Buddhism in India, along with Madhyamaka.
The compound Yogācāra literally means "practice of yoga", or "one whose practice is yoga", hence the name of the school is literally "the school of the yogins". Yogācāra was also variously termed Vijñānavāda, Vijñaptivāda or Vijñaptimātratā-vāda, which is also the name given to its major theory of mind which seeks to deconstruct how we perceive the world. There are several interpretations of this main theory: various forms of Idealism, as well as a phenomenology or representationalism. Aside from this, Yogācāra also developed an elaborate analysis of consciousness and mental phenomena, as well as an extensive system of Buddhist spiritual practice, i.e. yoga.
The movement has been traced to the first centuries of the common era and seems to have evolved as some yogis of the Sarvāstivāda and Sautrāntika traditions in north India adopted Mahayana Buddhism. The brothers Asaṅga and Vasubandhu are considered the classic philosophers and systematizers of this school, while it is also traditionally attributed by Buddhist believers to the figure of Maitreya. Yogācāra was later imported to Tibet and East Asia by figures like Shantaraksita and Xuanzang. Today, Yogācāra ideas and texts continue to be influential subjects of study for Tibetan Buddhism and East Asian Buddhism.
Doctrine
Yogācāra philosophy is primarily meant to aid in the practice of yoga and meditation and thus it also sets forth a systematic analysis of the Mahayana path of mental training. Yogācārins made use of ideas from previous traditions, such as Prajñāpāramitā and the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma tradition, to develop a novel analysis of conscious experience and a corresponding schema for Mahāyāna spiritual practice. Yogācāra sutras such as the Saṅdhinirmocana Sūtra developed various core concepts such as vijñapti-mātra, the ālaya-vijñāna, the turning of the basis,'' the three natures, and emptiness. These form a complex system, and each can be taken as a point of departure for understanding Yogācāra.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 in modern and ancient Yogacara sources. The standard translation of both terms is "consciousness-only" or "mind-only." Several modern researchers object to this translation in favor of alternatives like representation-only. The meaning of this term is at the heart of the modern scholarly disagreement about whether Yogacara Buddhism can be said to be a form of idealism or whether it is definitely not idealist.Origins
According to Lambert Schmithausen, 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 which are the object of meditative concentration, are different/separate from the contemplating mind 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.The term is sometimes used as a synonym with citta-mātra, which is also used as a name for the school that suggests Idealism. Schmithausen writes that the first appearance of this term is in the Pratyupanna samadhi sutra, which states "this triple world is nothing but mind. Why? Because however I imagine things, that is how they appear."
Regarding existing Sanskrit sources, the term appears in the first verse of Vasubandhu's Vimśatikā, which states:
This is vijñaptimātra, since it manifests itself as an unreal object, just like the case of those with cataracts seeing unreal hairs in the moon and the like.
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."
The term also appears in Asaṅga's classic work, the Mahāyānasaṃgraha '':
These representations are mere representations, because there is no thing/object...Just as in a dream there appear, even without a thing/object, just in the mind alone, forms/images of all kinds of things/objects like visibles, sounds, smells, tastes, tangibles, houses, forests, land, and mountains, and yet there are no things/objects at all in that .MSg II.6
Another classic statement of the doctrine appears in Dharmakīrti's Pramānaṿārttika'' which states: "cognition experiences itself, and nothing else whatsoever. Even the particular objects of perception, are by nature just consciousness itself."
Interpretations of ''vijñapti-mātra''
There is a lively debate over how exactly Yogācāra, and specifically the concept of vijñapti-mātra, should be understood in the context of Western philosophy. In earlier Western scholarship, and among some contemporaries, Yogācāra is understood as a form of idealism, such as Berkeley's subjective idealism that denies the existence of an external, objective world and asserts that reality consists solely of minds and their ideas. However, there is also a camp of authors who assert that Yogācāra is best understood as a form of soteriological phenomenology. Under this interpretation, Yogācāra is not making claims about what "ultimately exists", but is an epistemic and therapeutic project aimed at understanding how experience is cognitively constructed, interpreted, and reified.Idealism
According to Bruce Cameron Hall, the interpretation of this doctrine as a form of subjective or absolute idealism has been "the most common 'outside' interpretation of Vijñānavāda, not only by modern writers, but by its ancient opponents, both Hindu and Buddhist." Scholars such as Jay Garfield, Saam Trivedi, Nobuyoshi Yamabe, Paul Williams, and Sean Butler argue that Yogācāra is similar to Idealism, though they note that it is its own unique form and that it might be confusing to categorize it as such.The German scholar and philologist Lambert Schmithausen affirms that Yogācāra sources teach a type of idealism which is supposed to be a middle way between Abhidharma realism and what it often considered a nihilistic position which only affirms emptiness as the ultimate. Schmithausen notes that philological study of Yogācāra texts shows that they clearly reject the independent existence of mind and the external world. He also notes that the current trend in rejecting the idealistic interpretation might be related to the unpopularity of idealism among Western academics. Florin Deleanu likewise affirms the idealist nature of Yogācāra texts, while also underscoring how Yogācāra retains a strong orientation to a soteriology which aims at contemplative realization of an ultimate reality that is an ‘inexpressible essence’ beyond any subject-object duality.
Similarly, Jonathan Gold writes that the Yogācāra thinker Vasubandhu can be said to be an idealist, in the sense that for him, everything in experience as well as its causal support is mental, and thus he gives causal priority to the mental. At the same time however, this is only in the conventional realm, since "mind" is just another concept and true reality for Vasubandhu is ineffable, "an inconceivable 'thusness'." Indeed, the Vimśatikā states that the very idea of vijñapti-mātra must also be understood to be itself a self-less construction and thus vijñapti-mātra is not the ultimate truth in Yogācāra. Thus according to Gold, while Vasubandhu's vijñapti-mātra can be said to be a “conventionalist idealism”, it is to be seen as unique and different from Western forms, especially Hegelian Absolute Idealism.
Mere representation
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, Dunne, Lusthaus, Powers, and Wayman.Some scholars like David Kalupahana argue that it is a mistake to conflate the terms citta-mātra with vijñapti-mātra. However, Deleanu points out that Vasubandhu clearly states in his Twenty Verses and Abhidharmakosha that vijñapti and citta are synonymous. Nevertheless, different alternative translations for vijñapti-mātra have been proposed, such as representation-only, ideation-only, impressions-only and perception-only.
Alex Wayman notes that one's interpretation of Yogācāra will depend on how the qualifier mātra is to be understood in this context, and he objects to interpretations which claim that Yogācāra rejects the external world altogether, preferring translations such as "amounting to mind" or "mirroring mind" for citta-mātra. For Wayman, what this doctrine means is that "the mind has only a report or representation of what the sense organ had sensed." The representationalist interpretation is also supported by Stefan Anacker.
According to Thomas Kochumuttom, Yogācāra is a realistic pluralism which does not deny the existence of individual beings. Kochumuttom argues that Yogācāra is not idealism since it denies that absolute reality is a consciousness, that individual beings are transformations or illusory appearances of an absolute consciousness. Thus, for Kochumuttom, vijñapti-mātra means "mere representation of consciousness," a view which states "that the world as it appears to the unenlightened ones is mere representation of consciousness". Furthermore, according to Kochumuttom, in Yogācāra "the absolute state is defined simply as emptiness, namely the emptiness of subject-object distinction. Once thus defined as emptiness, it receives a number of synonyms, none of which betray idealism."