Introduction
Yogacara, one of the two major schools of Mahayana Buddhism, flourished in India from the 4th to 12th century CE. It is also named as Vijnanavada, Vijiaptimatra or Cittamatra. Due to its privilege given to the concept of ‘consciousness’ or ‘mind’, it is sometimes simply called as ‘Mind-only’.
The teaching of this school, to a large extent, represents a reworking of particular Abhidharma themes in response to the Prajnaparamita and Madhyamaka’s teaching of emptiness. Yogacara returns to giving a positive account and new interpretation of the workings of the mind and its relationship with our living world – how things come to appear other than the way they are. To achieve this purpose, the school introduces two very core and fundamental theories to the account of our mind and the world we live in. The first one is the theory of eight types of consciousness which explains how our mind works as a whole with the participations of the eight different consciousnesses. The second one is the theory of ‘three natures’ (tri-svabhava) which tries to give an account to the three basic modes by which we perceive our world.
The Three Natures
As mentioned, the theory of the three natures is one of the central concepts of Yogacara philosophy which refers one world can be perceived in three different ways. At the level of the Imaginary Nature (Parakalpita), ordinary sentient beings confront reality in terms of a subject–object distinction and thereby construct the flow of appearances into distinct entities with enduring natures. As a result, we experience ourselves as conscious subjects (the grasper) interacting with a world of objects (the grasped) which exist independently from us. However, as viewed by Yogacara, this is an illusion because it is only the operation of mind that brings about the illusion of the duality of subject and object. In fact, the world is only unreal imaginings of things that it does not ultimately exist, which is mind-projected and mind-dependent nature.
On the other hand, when sentient beings come to the realization that conceptually constructed entities do not themselves exist at all – both the grasper and the things grasped are in fact ideas or pieces of information, thrown up by the traces and seeds deposited in the store consciousness. They therefore have no objective, permanent and independent nature. When attaining the correct understanding of the dependently originated nature of things, people are said to be understood the world at the level of the Dependent Nature (Paratantra).
Finally, when someone understands the complete absence of the duality of subject and object in the ‘dependent nature’ of experience and apprehends things as they are in themselves, uninfluenced by any conceptualization at all, one will lead to the termination of illusion is brought about and experience will appear in its perfect state. This is the level of the Absolute Nature (Pranispanna).
Furthermore, we can also say that the Dependent Nature serves as the common basis of the other two. The state of mind discriminates the conventional reality from the ultimate reality: the Imaginary Nature is the reality perceived by an un-awakened mind while the Ultimate Nature is the reality perceived by an awakened mind. Therefore, it should be emphasized that these two realities are not taken to be distinct. There is just one world but being perceived in different ways by different beings. By introducing the theories of eight types of consciousness and ‘three natures’, Yogacarins then make a claim that the world we know, the world we live in, is merely a mental world. They deny the ultimate independent existence of a separate experiencing subject on the one hand and another separate world ‘out there’ of experienced objects. That the world appears like this is an illusion constructed out of consciousness or mind. However, this is not to be taken as saying that I, the experiencing subject, somehow exist as my mind, my consciousness, while the external world of objects does not exist. It is precisely both that are ultimately illusions – the ‘ideas’ fabricated by mind. By this philosophical understanding, Yogacarins lay their first stepping stone to start their soteriological project.
A Soteriologico-ontological Doctrine
For Yogacarins, as long as we see the world in terms of really existent experiencing subjects and really existing experienced objects, we are trapped into a world of beings grasping at their experiences as objects of possession. Thus they claim to present an account of how we construct our world out of ideas, of how this causes us suffering, and of how we can turn this process around and liberate from suffering. With the support by the theories, Yogacarins successfully de-construct the living world and expose its mind-dependent nature. However, the theories themselves are not to be understood as ultimately valid, since at the end the goal is to realize that even mind does not exist. This is the reason why they call for a transformation of consciousness into wisdom (轉識成智) – to perceive things as they truly are. Therefore, as suggested by M. D’amato, the teaching of the three natures is better understood as soteriologico-ontological doctrines: they do not represent reality as it really is; rather, they identify stages of ontological gnosis that must be traversed in order to attain enlightenment or buddhahood.
Reference
- D’amato M., ‘Three Natures, Three stages: an interpretation of the Yogacara Tri-svabhava Theory,’ Journal of Indian Philosophy (2005) 33:185–207.
- Gethin, Rupert, The foundation of Buddhism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
- Jin Yin. “Yogacara and the Consciousness-only School.” Course note for BSTC6002: Mahayana Buddhism. Master of Buddhist Studies, the Hong Kong University, 2007.
- Williams, Paul, Buddhist Thought. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
- Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogacara. Assessed on 9 May, 2007.