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Home , Abhidharma, Asanga, Manas (early Buddhism)

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 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 . 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 can be the school of Yogācāra. In the early first millennium CE understood as a philosophically based approach to two brothers in , and , 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 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 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 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. development of and his (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 (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 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 . 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 . 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. The main aspects examined are the nature ideas to a Western audience. of the concept’s structure and mode of operation. After

this, comparison between several translations of the text storehouse. These are the things that happen to us and is performed in order to ensure the proper understanding the things that we do. Through the fruiting of these seeds of the ideas are grasped and coming through in the various transformations of consciousness occur and in translation to English. Next, careful reading of Freud turn those transformations lead to actions which plant and Piaget is conducted. Freud is read looking at the new seeds. The seeds are the source and product of ideas of unconsciousness and the development of the action and can be seen to serve as the mechanism by Ego from the Id. The reading on Piaget focuses on his which the frames of reference we use in judgement and idea of schemas and their modification through decision making and the actions those frames generate assimilation and accommodation. Lastly, comparison of co-create one another. Also, these seeds, as the contents the ideas of the two traditions is done at an abstract level of the storehouse, are fundamentally not graspable by looking for philosophical and conceptual elements consciousness. The seeds, as the operations within contained within. In particular focus is given to consciousness, are not experienced by it because they structural and functional aspects of the concepts, are the elements that create experience. looking to see how the two traditions identify Materials. The Thirty Verses on Consciousness Only by components of mental functions. Vasubandhu will be the text used in the analysis of This reading will analyze three concepts from the Yogācāra concepts. Two versions will be utilized, Ben Yogācāra school: human experience, the alayavijñana, Connolley’s Inside Vasubandhu's Yogācāra and Dan and bija. The first will be taken to mean the study of Lusthaus’s Buddhist phenomenology,providing four personal (subjective) experience meaning perception, translations and commentary from both. Analysis of attention, emotion, thoughts, and judgements. The Western psychological texts will also be performed to Yogācāra view of the human experience as a construct examine the ideas that will be compared and contrasted of consciousness will be examined. The perspective of with the ideas of the Yogācāra school. The Ego and The the subject is not seen as an experience of any sort Id and General Psychological Theory: Papers on outside reality, but as something occurring exclusively Metapsychology by Sigmund Freud will be read looking within the consciousness. A large implication of this into the unconscious operations of the mind. Origin of analysis is that we cannot have knowledge of external Intelligence in the Child and The Construction of reality, merely our conscious experience of it, and thus Reality in the Child from Jean Piaget will be examined have no way of knowing if the two are the same. This is with a focus on the development of mental operation. not to make the claim of idealism, that there is not any Procedure. This textual analysis will explore three sort of external reality outside of our own minds, but concepts from several translations of a key Yogācāra that the experience we have is that of consciousness text. This text will serve to formulate the clear and being conscious of objects within that same operational definitions of the three core concepts being consciousness. This is a subtle understanding, and the examined and set them up to be compared with ideas only claim that is made is that experience is contained from the West. Next the analysis will attend to four texts within consciousness only. And as for where the objects from Western psychology, from Piaget and Freud All within consciousness originate or if they are tied to a woven together these ideas in the West can be material object outside the body, no assertion is made. understood through the lens of this school and will serve The second concept is the ground of all to help depict Yogācāra ideas on grounds already being consciousness in the thinking of the school. It is both all used in the West. Because this school is very deeply of conscious experience and all of the elements that influenced by Buddhist thinking some care and attention work to influence or are influenced by that experience. will have to be given to the outlining of some of the Seen as something that is not able to be an object of more challenging aspects of the teachings. In particular perception, the storehouse is where all the elements that the notions of anatman (no self) and interdependent make up a person reside transforming the consciousness origination are central to and will and thus the subjective experience. This storehouse is present the most challenging ideas to relate to a Western the source of all the transformations of consciousness audience. As such, more of the research will be focused that make up our experience. As experience is taken to on developing the Buddhist philosophical ideas than the be contained within consciousness only these philosophical foundations of the Western ideas transformations are of vital importance. These examined. operations within consciousness are the source of the objects we perceive and even the sense we have of Results ourselves as an internal watcher looking out. These Within the Buddhist psychology consciousness is operations of consciousness aggregate together into seen as an attending awareness. Reading the Verses human experience. shows the Buddhist conception of this clearly, There The last concept is taken to be the individual are, initially, 6 Layers. The first five correspond to the constituent elements that are contained in the senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste), that is the contact between a given sense object and that sense the necessity of the unconscious, and its dynamic consciousness. The sixth layer is that of ideation. This nature. Freud agrees to account for experience parts of layer of consciousness is the sensory information from the mind are taken to be unconscious. This for Freud the other layers, arranged into the present moment means that they are not capable of being visible to experience. This is also seen as mental consciousness, Conscious awareness, which is the same with the object being the idea created, being sensed by conceptualization found from Vasubandhu. the mind consciousness. Then, the Yogacara school Additionally, the Unconscious part of the mind is added two more. The seventh and eighth layers are a sort dynamic. Frued says the unconscious is made up of of continuity, and the storehouse. The energies, or drives, that power the mind. His consciousness links together one moment of awareness unconscious is populated drives that exert influence and to the next, leading to continuous experience of a self. are a part of us deep down. And the last is the storehouse. It is the meaning making This first exploratory analysis shows evidence framework and involved in coordination of decision that there is, prima facie, conceptual overlap in the ideas making, built of experience. of the Yogacara school, and ideas from Freud and Vasubandhu explains that the storehouse Piaget. The storehouse is an unconscious and dynamic consciousness is not observable by our awareness, even generator of action and repository of meaning and finds as a mental phenomenon to the sixth consciousness. itself at home in Western minds. This storehouse is the ground of experience from which the higher consciousness layers arise as transformations Implications of consciousness. It is the root, and from it grows a sense This analysis stands to offer the benefit of outside of self, then that self’s continuity, and lastly the pieces insight that might not otherwise have been discovered of experience that all come together. Additionally, it is and has the potential to enhance the state of affairs in viewed as the co-constitutive link between experience our understanding and work with the human mind. A and meaning. Because it houses the seeds of experience, particular limitation of this analysis is the challenge in it is where experience influences meaning and meaning adapting Eastern ideas of reality and self for a Western influences experience. audience. The main challenge here is found in The seeds, Bija, are seen as karmic energy that attempting to develop a common language between the forms from impressions of events made on our ideas we hold in the West and the ideas of the East. A consciousness, planting the seeds of future action in the difficult hurdle to overcome is the idea of the non-reality very root of our awareness. There is the energy of the self or other conceptual objects, something that eventually comes to life and acts in some way on tends to clash with the subject object dichotomy, which experience. Either from the sense data selected to be a is a foundational basis of Western science. One aspect part of the experience, or the reaction to the moment, the of this challenge is that the idea common in Western seed thinking that the Self is a real thing inside looking out at exerts its energy leading to action, a sort of a separate and distinct reality, something that does not flowering. These mental structures and the functions line up with the consciousness only view of Yogācāra. that they serve share similarity with concepts from Additionally, an aspect that can be challenging is the Western psychology, particularly with Piaget and perception of Buddhism as something of a challenger of Freud. social or religious norms in the West. Buddhism of the Piaget, in his works; The origins of intelligence Mahayana school, of which Yogacara is a branch, sees in children and the construction of reality in the child, no single thing as having an essential, independent, gives a developmental account of mental processes and existence, and thus all things were empty of self. structures. He describes schemas, which he says are However, I think at their core, the teachings of the interconnected collections of units of knowledge, and school and the thought in the West are not incompatible, work to create meaning for sensory experience. These but merely another perspective. Also, I think they can schemas are adaptive, and have two ways of responding be useful even outside of the Buddhist philosophical to new information. The first is assimilation, which is tradition. My aim here is to make an effort to present the the process that takes new information into a schema, ideas of this school as something that is not a religious done by adding the new information to the previous. On teaching, but as a psychologically oriented school of the other hand, accommodation occurs when the schema philosophic thought containing ideas that can enhance must be modified to fit new information and possibly Western understanding of the human mind. This the creation of a new schema for a new collection of analysis is important because it can help to expand the information. connections between thinking here in the West and Freud presents ideas in the ego and the id and elsewhere. And this can be done by grounding the General psychological theory, that also reflect school more in the psychology, rather than the similarities with those of Yogacara. His description of philosophy. Making the attempt to bring outside

thinking into our understanding is expected to aid in Jiang, T. (2006). Contexts and dialogue: Yogācāra treatment. The better we are able to understand our Buddhism and modern psychology on the subliminal minds and the behavior that is produced the better we mind. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. will be able to develop ways to help those who suffer Jiang, T. (2004). Storehouse consciousness and the from the myriad ways in which our minds can work unconscious: A comparative study of Xuan Zang and against us. The proposed audience for this research is Freud on the subliminal mind. Journal of the those familiar with basic psychological ideas in the American Academy of Religion, 72(1) 119-139. West, but who don’t necessarily possess a similar Jiang, T. (2001). The Storehouse Consciousness familiarity with . A large limitation (Alayavijnana) of Wei-Shi (Yogācāra) Buddhism: impacting the research is the remoteness of the school, The Buddhist Phenomenology of the Un-conscious both spatially and temporally. I am having to go far far (Doctoral Dissertation). 0493440003 back and rely on a small number of translated materials Joshanloo, M. (2014). Eastern conceptualizations of to access the ideas. Despite this, I do believe the amount happiness: Fundamental differences with Western and quality of data I am working with is sufficient for views. Journal of Happiness Studies, 15, 475–493. me to generalize, because I am using two sources for the doi: 10.1007/s10902-013-9431-1 Yogācāra material which offer multiple translations and Lusthaus, D. (2006). Buddhist phenomenology: A commentary. However due to a lack of familiarity with philosophical investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism the original languages, I am required to accept and the Ch'eng Wei-shih lun. London: Routledge translations and any mistakes they may contain. Also, Curzon. the highly abstract nature of the matters being examined Mosig, Y.D. (2006). Conceptions of the Self in Western presents a special challenge when relating ideas to those and Eastern Psychology. Journal of Theoretical and less familiar with Eastern philosophical ideas. However, Philosophical Psychology, 26, 39-50. grounding these ideas in more familiar Western terms Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. should be able to overcome these challenges. New York, NY: International Universities Press. Piaget, J. (1971). The construction of reality in the child. Acknowledgements New York, NY: Ballantine Books. I thank the California State University, Stanislaus Honors Program for support throughout this research, and Dr. Andrew Young for his guidance and enthusiasm for helping me with this research.

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