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Yogāchāra - Yogācāra

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Sanskrit - "application of yoga" (also called the Vijnanavada, lit. "the School That Teaches Knowing"); school of Mahayana Buddhism founded by Maitreyanatha, Asanga, and Vasubandhu.

According to the central notion of the Yogachara, everything experienceable is "mind only" (chittamatra); things exist only as processes of knowing, not as "objects"; outside the knowing process they have no reality. The "external world" is thus "purely mind." Just as there are no things qua objects, there is also no subject who experiences. Perception is a process of creative imagination that produces apparently outer objects. This process is explained with the help of the concept of the "storehouse consciousness" (alaya-vijnana). In addition the teaching of the three bodies of a buddha (trikaya) took its definitive form in the Yogachara. Apart from the founders, important representatives of the school were Sthiramati and Dharmapala, both of whom originated new currents within the Yogachara school (Fa-hsiang school, Hosso school).

The name of the Yogachara school stems from the fact that its followers placed particular value on the practice of "yoga," which here is used in a quite general way to mean meditative practice that perfects all the qualities of a future buddha, a bodhisattva.

The mechanism of the arising of the external world is explained in the Yogachara in the following manner:

In the alaya-vijnana, which is the ground of knowledge and the storehouse of all previous impressions, seeds (bija) develop, which produce mental phenomena. As the storehouse of all seeds, the alaya-vijnana is the determining factor for the process of ripening (vipaka) by which the Yogachara explains the development of karma. In the storehouse consciousness, the seeds affect each other in such a way that their interaction creates the deception that something really exists. The alaya-vijnana is often compared to a stream, the water of which perpetually renews itself and after the death of an individual being continues to flow, providing continuity from one existence to the next.

The individual forms of sense consciousness are produced by the activity of the seeds and the mind (manas). The latter is "tainted" and is considered the main factor in the arising of subjectivity. It creates the illusion of an I, or ego, where in fact only psychological phenomena exist, that is, only experience, no experiencing subject. That which is knowable by the mind--phenomena--is of threefold nature: conceptualized (parikalpita), dependent (paratantra), and perfect (parinishpanna). The conceptualized phenomena are mere imagination, false conceptions. They are dependent because they arise in dependence upon other factors. They are perfect in their true or ultimate nature, which is emptiness (shunyata), also known as "suchness" (tathata). The characteristic of "suchness" is nonduality. Realization of this true nature is enlightenment (bodhi). It is immanent in all things. "Suchness" is sometimes also called the buddha-self; on this account the Yogachara was accused of substantialism.

The path to liberation in the Yogachara, in continuance of ancient Buddhism, is divided into four stages and presumes practice of the paramitas and concentration (samadhi):

(1) preliminary path--here the bodhisattva undertakes the teaching of "mind only";
(2) path of seeing (darshana-marga)--in this stage the bodhisattva gains a realistic understanding of the teaching, attains knowledge beyond concepts, and enters upon the first of the ten stages (bhumi) of the development of a bodhisattva, realizing higher intuitive knowledge, in which subject and object are one; on the path of seeing, the elimination of the defilements (klesha) begins as well as the "conversion of the ground";
(3) path of meditation (bhavanamarga)--here the bodhisattva passes successively through he ten stages and develops the insight already attained further; liberation from defilements and "conversion of the ground" continue;
(4) path of fulfillment--in this last stage all defilements are eliminated and the "conversion of the ground" is completed, putting an end to the cycle of existence (samsara); the bodhisattva has actualized the "body of the great order" (dharmakaya, trikaya).

The Yogachara school reached its zenith in the 6th century. A center of the school was the monastic university Nalanda in northern India. There Dharmapala taught an absolute idealism and concentrated on the doctrine of "nothing but conception."

Along with the school of Nalanda existed the school of Valabhi, which was founded by Gunamati and had its most important representative in Sthiramati. The latter advocated a moderate idealism ad attempted to reconcile the teaching of the Yogachara with that of Nagarjuna. The focal point of his thought was the notion of emptiness (shunyata). A rapprochement of Yogachara thought with that of the Sautrantikas produced the logical epistemology school of Dignaga and his student Dharmakirti.

Opponents of the Yogachara were the followers of the Madhyamika school, which fiercely criticized the Yogachara system, in which it saw a revival of substandtialistic thought.
From: The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen

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Yogāchāra - Yogācāra
	A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M - N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z Sanskrit - "application of yoga" (also called the Vijnanavada, lit. "the School That Teaches Knowing"); school of Mahayana Buddhism founded by Maitreyanatha, Asanga, and Vasubandhu. According to the central notion of the Yogachara, everything experienceable is "mind only" (chittamatra); things exist only as processes of knowing, not as "objects"; outside the knowing process they have no reality. The "external world" is thus "purely mind." Just as there are no things qua objects, there is also no subject who experiences. Perception is a process of creative imagination that produces apparently outer objects. This process is explained with the help of the concept of the "storehouse consciousness" (alaya-vijnana). In addition the teaching of the three bodies of a buddha (trikaya) took its definitive form in the Yogachara. Apart from the founders, important representatives of the school were Sthiramati and Dharmapala, both of whom originated new currents within the Yogachara school (Fa-hsiang school, Hosso school). The name of the Yogachara school stems from the fact that its followers placed particular value on the practice of "yoga," which here is used in a quite general way to mean meditative practice that perfects all the qualities of a future buddha, a bodhisattva. The mechanism of the arising of the external world is explained in the Yogachara in the following manner: In the alaya-vijnana, which is the ground of knowledge and the storehouse of all previous impressions, seeds (bija) develop, which produce mental phenomena. As the storehouse of all seeds, the alaya-vijnana is the determining factor for the process of ripening (vipaka) by which the Yogachara explains the development of karma. In the storehouse consciousness, the seeds affect each other in such a way that their interaction creates the deception that something really exists. The alaya-vijnana is often compared to a stream, the water of which perpetually renews itself and after the death of an individual being continues to flow, providing continuity from one existence to the next. The individual forms of sense consciousness are produced by the activity of the seeds and the mind (manas). The latter is "tainted" and is considered the main factor in the arising of subjectivity. It creates the illusion of an I, or ego, where in fact only psychological phenomena exist, that is, only experience, no experiencing subject. That which is knowable by the mind--phenomena--is of threefold nature: conceptualized (parikalpita), dependent (paratantra), and perfect (parinishpanna). The conceptualized phenomena are mere imagination, false conceptions. They are dependent because they arise in dependence upon other factors. They are perfect in their true or ultimate nature, which is emptiness (shunyata), also known as "suchness" (tathata). The characteristic of "suchness" is nonduality. Realization of this true nature is enlightenment (bodhi). It is immanent in all things. "Suchness" is sometimes also called the buddha-self; on this account the Yogachara was accused of substantialism. The path to liberation in the Yogachara, in continuance of ancient Buddhism, is divided into four stages and presumes practice of the paramitas and concentration (samadhi): (1) preliminary path--here the bodhisattva undertakes the teaching of "mind only"; (2) path of seeing (darshana-marga)--in this stage the bodhisattva gains a realistic understanding of the teaching, attains knowledge beyond concepts, and enters upon the first of the ten stages (bhumi) of the development of a bodhisattva, realizing higher intuitive knowledge, in which subject and object are one; on the path of seeing, the elimination of the defilements (klesha) begins as well as the "conversion of the ground"; (3) path of meditation (bhavanamarga)--here the bodhisattva passes successively through he ten stages and develops the insight already attained further; liberation from defilements and "conversion of the ground" continue; (4) path of fulfillment--in this last stage all defilements are eliminated and the "conversion of the ground" is completed, putting an end to the cycle of existence (samsara); the bodhisattva has actualized the "body of the great order" (dharmakaya, trikaya). The Yogachara school reached its zenith in the 6th century. A center of the school was the monastic university Nalanda in northern India. There Dharmapala taught an absolute idealism and concentrated on the doctrine of "nothing but conception." Along with the school of Nalanda existed the school of Valabhi, which was founded by Gunamati and had its most important representative in Sthiramati. The latter advocated a moderate idealism ad attempted to reconcile the teaching of the Yogachara with that of Nagarjuna. The focal point of his thought was the notion of emptiness (shunyata). A rapprochement of Yogachara thought with that of the Sautrantikas produced the logical epistemology school of Dignaga and his student Dharmakirti. Opponents of the Yogachara were the followers of the Madhyamika school, which fiercely criticized the Yogachara system, in which it saw a revival of substandtialistic thought. From: The Shambhala Dictionary of Buddhism and Zen	~ -
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