Yogacara Buddhism and the Storehouse Consciousness

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Yogacara Buddhism and the Storehouse Consciousness A Textual Analysis of Yogācāra and Western Psychology Kenneth Foster B.A. Candidate, Department of Psychology, California State University Stanislaus, 1 University Circle, Turlock, CA 95382 Received 9 May, 2020; accepted 15 May, 2020 Abstract Contemporary psychology is awash in Buddhist ideas. These ideas from a very long and ancient tradition may contain new insights into how we understand the mind today. Can we find constructs that could open new doors into our assessment of the human condition? Analysis of this question will consist of a reading on the central idea from the Yogacara Buddhist school, the storehouse consciousness and its seeds. Clear conceptual overlap is found between the ideas from the school and those of Piaget and Freud. Piaget’s ideas of intelligence development, and the structural functioning of cognition are one area. Another is Freud's dynamic unconscious, seen as the psychic energy we are not aware of that drives our minds. The ideas of the West could be used to give a language for understanding the concepts of the Buddhist school. I believe that these concepts will give insight into better understanding the human mind and treating suffering. Keywords: yogacara, storehouse, experience Introduction because the experience of the individual is vitally in Eastern thinking has been finding more and more applied psychology settings. of a welcome reception in the field of psychology here Coleman (2010) sketches out the development of in the West, in particular Buddhism. Buddhism can be the school of Yogācāra. In the early first millennium CE understood as a philosophically based approach to two brothers in India, Asanga and Vasubandhu, took the lessening human suffering, and it has grown and systematic psychological understanding from one adapted to the cultures in which it has found a home. school of Buddhism and wove it together with the However, it is, at its core, deeply rooted in the philosophical underpinnings of another. Their efforts psychology of human and experience and the were a response to disputes within the Buddhist relationship of that experience to suffering. Standing out community. One approach, the Abhidharma school, had as a very sophisticated and in-depth survey of human put forward a theory that another school disagreed with. psychology is the school of Yogācāra Buddhism. So, as Asanga convinced Vasubandhu to leave the one of the most psychologically oriented schools of Abhidharma school and they founded the Yogācāra Buddhist thought, can anything be found in their texts school, which was focused on examining and and ideas to help forge a new perspective in the West understanding the most subtle aspects of experience, and to expand knowledge of the human condition? The particularly the workings of their own minds in key development of this school is the Alayavijnana meditation. Their main area of concern became the (storehouse consciousness), developed by Vasubandhu, unconscious aspects of the human mind. Although they a co-founder of the school and a main source of writings could observe the most subtle aspects of their mental that can be explored. activity, still there were areas they could not seem to The Alayavijnana is the core concept of the access directly. And so they worked to develop and Yogācāra school and could be used in a radical change understand this mental activity, in an effort to align the in our understanding of cognition. This consciousness is ideas of their psychology with the doctrine of emptiness. the ground of all consciousness but cannot itself be Jiang (2001) discusses the development within the known. It is both all of conscious experience and all of school of a concept, the ālāyavijñāna, or storehouse the elements that work to influence or are influenced by consciousness, which was the foundation of all that experience. The school posits that everything is conscious awareness experienced by a person. The appearance only, meaning that our experience is really consciousness was viewed as a dynamic process that that of transforming consciousness. The inner “I”, the shaped experience and action, while at the same time outside world and all objects are merely internal mental being shaped by those very things. It was seen as serving appearances. We cannot have direct contact with or as the basis for experience, in the same way a riverbed knowledge of an exterior world. This is important channels the flow of a river. This storehouse was also fundamentally unobservable in conscious experience as The ideas of the school have been debated, it was seen to be conscious experience itself, however, commented upon, and passed down through tradition. through inference and careful observation of the most They speak to things that are of interest in the East and subtle aspects of conscious mind they could piece the West, our own experience, who we are, and what we together what was happening under the surface and know. Bowker (2008) Situates the tradition in the develop a practice to teach this understanding. context of Buddhist philosophy at that time and Moreover, the ideas of consciousness and experience positions the Yogācāra tradition as a continuation of the are nearly inseparable and we see that here. Mahayana development of Nagarjuna and his Chanda (2015) establishes the Yogācāra school was explanation of sunyaya (emptiness). Cross (2013) also very phenomenologically focused and viewed human puts the Yogācāra school as the further developing of experience as the end result of numerous cognitive the Prajnaparamita (perfection of wisdom) and that the processes, or transformations of consciousness, that position of appearance (or mind) only is the subtle constructed our reality from sense data we take in. The development of karma and karmic seeds, into a school believed that the human experience was only systematized synthesis. But, as Mosig (2006) illustrates, representation. Their view was that our experience is not a difficult gap between East and West is the concept of the same as any external reality that may be providing Self in the two traditions. So examining the ideas of one the sensory data of the experience, but that it is a may have to be filtered through the lens of representation of that reality in human consciousness understanding of the other in order to find ideas of merit. and as such was considered consciousness only. This is Goleman (1981) discusses the commonalities and not to say that the school was one of idealism, they differences between Buddhist and Western Psychology. simply did not comment on an external reality other than He maintains that while there may be similarities that to say we do not access it directly and have no those are superficial in the face of the fundamental knowledge of it. There is more than the construction of underlying paradigm. Buddhism puts forward the idea reality to the storehouse though, but also what’s inside. of a radical change so radical that Westerners will be too Jiang (2006) shows another constructive aspect of skeptical of its applicability. Additionally, Joshanloo the storehouse consciousness was it serving as the (2014) points out a major obstacle for the idea of container for the bija, or karmic seeds. These seeds were seeking insight into therapy here in the West from the seen as the element of the storehouse upon which the literature of Buddhism is the fundamental difference in transformations of consciousness were contingent. happiness outlined in the West versus the East. Here These seeds represented actions done by an individual, happiness is often a matter of success at goals, and is with each act said to be planting a new seed for its sort tied to an outcome. However, in Buddhism happiness of action. These seeds influence the further behaviors; can be better said to be tied to equanimity, and is not the as an angry person plants a seed of anger by yelling, he same end goal as in the East. is now more likely to yell in a future transformation of So, the question remains, can we examine the texts consciousness. Thus, the seeds affect the storehouse by of the Yogācāra school of Buddhism to search for building patterns of behavior in the flow of parallels with our understanding of cognition here in the consciousness. Yet, despite its psychological nature the West in order to develop better understanding and, with Yogācāra school is deeply grounded in a particular insight, more effective treatment practice? I believe, philosophy. despite the challenges presented by the difficult nature There is a lot to be found in the scholarship about of the philosophy supporting the school, the analysis of the Yogācāra school of thought, in particular the Yogācāra schools will yield a new direction for storehouse consciousness (Jiang, 2004), however most understanding the human condition. And this of what is found is philosophical in nature than understanding will aid in bettering the treatment of psychological, focusing themselves on attempts to those who suffer. interpret and comment on the school’s thinking. And, what psychological attention the school does get Methods primarily focuses on the comparisons and contrasts with Overview. The first step of this analysis is a very psychodynamic theory and the subconscious. However, close reading of the 30 Verses of Vasubandhu. Working comparatively little is said about the relationship with my mentor, using his training as a Buddhist priest, between the structure and process of the storehouse with I am grounding my understanding of the Buddhist ideas of Western psychology, such as Jean Piaget's conception of mind, and the Yogacara conception of concept of schemas, or the similarities of automatic consciousness and perception. The analysis of the text cognitive processes, found in dual processing theories. is directed at the school's idea of the storehouse However the similarities may not be enough to consciousness and its function of creating our overcome a large challenge inherent in relating these experience.
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