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CHAPTER FIVE CONCLUSION The Development of Yogacara Yogdcdra presented by Vasubandhu himself could be considered to be "classical" Yogdcdra; it was just in Vasu­ bandhu's and his disciples' works this school attained its perfect maturity. Unlike Asanga, Vasubandhu carefully reserves from the arguments of the onthological character having strong intention to keep himself exclusively in the frames of pheno­ menology. Developing the concept of''Alaya-vijndna" and the teaching about three levels of reality (Trisvabhava), Vasu­ bandhu tells nothing about any Absolute, or the Only Mind, he reserves himself from discussion about the essence, or nature of consciousness examining only its phenomena (Laksana). Never­ theless, his disciples Sthiramati and Dharmapala transcended the limitations of the pure empiricism and phenomenologism of Vasubandhu distinctively proclaiming the idea of the non­ existence of the world outside consciousness (this position was accepted by the Chinese Yogacarins Xuan-zhuang and Kui- Ji; Xuan-zhuang was a pupil of Dharmapala's disciple). It can be added here that in India such words as Vijnaptimdtra and Cittamdtra were pure synonyms but the Chinese tradition 163 absolutely correctly distinguishes them. In the Chinese Buddhist parlance Cittamdtra {Wei-xin) is the name for the Tathdgata- garbha theory based schools whose intention was to investigate the very nature of Mind {Cittatva; Xin-xing), and Vijiiaptimdtra (Wei-shi) is a designation of the school of classical Yogdcdra with a phenomenological approach to Mind; their intention was to investigate only phenomena {Laksana; xiang) of consciousness and not its transcendental nature (that is Paratantra and not Parinispanna level). Xuan-zhuang's School of the Dharmic Phenomena (Fa-xiang-zong) just was a representative of this philosophical attitude. The Chinese Fa-xiang School, derived from the Indian Yogdcdra {Yoga practice) School, is based upon the writings of two brothers, Asanga and Vasubandhu, who explicated a course of practice wherein hindrances are removed according to a sequence of stages, from which it gets its name. The appellation of the school originated with the title of an important fourth or fifth-century CE text of the school, the Yogdcdra- bhumi-sastra. Yogdcdra attacked both the provisional practical realism of the Mddhyamika School of Mahdydna Buddhism and the complete realism of Theravdda Buddhism. Mddhyamika is regarded as the nihilistic or Emptiness School, whereas Yogdcdra is seen as the realistic or Existence School. While the former is characterized as Mahdydna due to its central theme of emptiness, the latter might be considered to be semi- Mahdydna to a point for three basic reasons: (1) the Yogdcdra 164 remains realistic like the Abhidharma School; (2) it expounds the three vehicles side by side without being confined to the Bodhisattvaydna; and (3) it does not accent the doctrine of Buddha nature. The other name of the school, Vijndnavdda (Consciousness-affirming/Doctrine of Consciousness), is more descriptive of its philosophical position, which in short is that the reality a human being perceives does not exist. Yogdcdra becomes much better known, nevertheless, not for its practices, but for its rich development in psychological and metaphysical theory. The Yogdcdra thinkers took the theories of the body- mind aggregate of sentient beings that had been under deve­ lopment in earlier Indian schools such as the Sarvdstivdda, and worked them into a more fully articulated scheme of eight consciousnesses, the weightiest of which was the eighth, or store consciousness - the Alayavijndna. The Yogdcdra School is also known for the development of other key concepts that would hold great influence not merely within their system, but within all forms of later Mahdydna to come. They embody the theory of the three natures of the dependently originated, completely real, and imaginary, which are understood as a Yogdcdra response to the Mddhyamika's truth of emptiness. Yogdcdra is also the original source for the theory of the three bodies of the Buddha, and greatly expands the notions of categories of elemental constructs. 165 Yogdcdra explored and propounded basic doctrines that were to be fundamental in the future growth of Mahdydna and that influenced the rise of Tantric Buddhism. Its central doctrine is that only consciousness (Vijndnamdtra; hence the name Vijndnavddd) is real, and that mind is the ultimate reality. In other words, external objects do not exist; nothing exists outside the mind. The common view that external phenomena exist is due to a misconception that is removable through a meditative or yogic process, which brings a complete withdrawal from these fictitious externals, and an inner concentration and tranquility may accordingly be bodied forth. Yogdcdra is an alternative system of Buddhist logic. According to it, the object is not at all as it seems, and thus can not be of any service to knowledge. It is therefore unreal when consciousness is the sole reality. The object is only a mode of consciousness. Its appearance although objective and external is in fact the transcendental illusion, because of which consciousness is bifurcated into the subject-object duality. Consciousness is creative and its creativity is governed by the illusive idea of the object. Reality is to be viewed as an Idea or a Will. This creativity is manifested at different levels of consciousness. Since this school believes that only ideation exists, it is also called the Idealistic School. In China, it was established by Xuan-zhuang and his chief disciple Kui-ji who systematized 166 the teaching of his masters recorded in two essential worlcs: the Fa yuan i lin zhang {Fa-yuan i-lin-chang or Chapter on the Forest of Meanings in the Garden of Law) and the Cheng wei shi lun shu ji {Ch'eng wei-shih lun shu-chi or Notes on the Treatise on the Completion of Ideation Only). On account of the school's idealistic accent it is known as Wei-shi {Wei-shih) or Ideation Only School; yet because it is concerned with the specific character of all the Dharmas, it is often called the Fa- xiang School as well. Besides, this school argues that not all beings possess pure seeds and, therefore, not all of them are capable of attaining Buddhahood. The central concept of this school is borrowed from a statement by Vasubandhu - "All this world is ideation only." It strongly claims that the external world is merely a fabrication of our consciousness, that the external world does not exist, and that the internal ideation presents an appearance as if it were an outer world. The whole external world is, hence, an illusion according to it. Metaphysics of Consciousness Only The Yogdcara metaphysic, thus formulated in India, was further developed in China, where, due to an artifact of tran­ slation and interpretation, the Tathdgata-garbha (in Chinese Fo-hsing - "Buddha-womb" - the womb for the Buddha or storehouse of the Buddha, the potential for Buddhahood which all beings possess.), was distinguished from the Alaya-vijndna. 167 In Indian texts such as the Lankavatdra and the Mahdpari- nirvana Sutras the Tathdgata-garbha was specifically identified with the Alaya-vijnana, and referred to the potential or cause leading or pointing towards enlightenment, rather than an actual state or reality. In Chinese, due to Mencian Confucian and Chuang-zi Taoist preconceptions, it came to mean "Buddha-nature", an ontological reality or essence, like the Vedantic Atman [Whalen Lai, The Meaning of "mind-only" {Wei-hsin): An analysis of a sinitic Mahdydna phenomenon, Philosophy East and West 27, no 1; p.73-74]. The Alaya- vijndna then came to be seen as a lower or impure level of Consciousness, the "tainted consciousness" (Shih) relative to the Tathdgata-garbha or innately pure Absolute Buddha Mind (Hsin) or Buddha-nature. Tathdgata-garbha or Mind or Hsin thus became a "ninth consciousness" or original principle over and above the other eight. This idea of the superiority of Mind (Hsin) over consciousness (Shih) was used by the Mind- Only schools of Hua-yen and Ch 'an to claim superiority over the consciousness-only school of Wei-shih (Chinese Yogdcdra) [Ibid, p.65, 79]. In all this we see the development of an emanationist cosmology more like Neo Platonism or Kashmir Shaivism than original Yogdcdra Mahdydna. But the anti- metaphysical emphasis of even the most elaborate Buddhist schools prevented this modified Yogdcdra from ever becoming as sophisticated as those other two systems. 168 Broadly speaking, Consciousness Only may cover the eight consciousnesses, the articulation of which forms one of the most seminal and distinctive aspects of the doctrine of the Yogdcdra School, transmitted to East Asia where it received the somewhat pejorative designations of Dharma-charactQr School and Consciousness-only School. According to this doctrine, sentient beings possess eight distinct layers of consciousness, the first five - the visual consciousness, auditory consciousness, olfactory consciousness, gustatory consciousness, and tactile consciousness - corresponding to the sense perceptions, the sixth discriminatory consciousness to the thinking mind, the seventh Manas consciousness to the notion of ego, and the eighth AI ay a-consciousuQss to the repository of all the impressions from one's past experiences. As the first seven of these arise on the basis of the eighth, they are called the transformed consciousnesses. In contrast, the eighth is known as the base consciousness, store consciousness, or seed consciousness. And in particular, it is this last consciousness that the Mere-Consciousness is all about. One of the foremost themes discussed in the school is the Alaya-vijndna or storehouse consciousness, which stores and coordinates all the notions reflected in the mind. Thus, it is a storehouse where all the pure and contaminated ideas are blended or interfused. 169 It is the doctrine of consciousness or mind as the basis for socalled "external" objects that gave the Cittamdtra (Mind Only) tradition its name.
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