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127-436: The Pramāṇa-samuccaya ( Compendium of Epistemology ) is a Buddhist philosophical treatise focusing on epistemology ( pramana ) by Dignāga , an Indian Buddhist logician and epistemologist who lived from c. 480 to c. 540 CE . The Pramāṇa-samuccaya exists in two Tibetan translations by Vasudhararaksita and Kanakavarman respectively. The original Sanskrit was initially thought to be lost by modern scholars, but then

254-591: A phenomenology or representationalism . Aside from this, Yogācāra also developed an elaborate analysis of consciousness ( vijñana ) and mental phenomena ( dharmas ), as well as an extensive system of Buddhist spiritual practice, i.e. yoga. The movement has been traced to the first centuries of the common era and seems to have developed as some yogis of the Sarvāstivāda and Sautrāntika traditions in north India adopted Mahayana Buddhism . The brothers Asaṅga and Vasubandhu (both c. 4-5th century CE), are considered

381-414: A being's stream of consciousness. These transformations are threefold according to Kalupahana. The first is the ālaya and its seeds, which is the flow or stream of consciousness, without any of the usual projections on top of it. The second transformation is manana , self-consciousness or "Self-view, self-confusion, self-esteem and self-love". It is "thinking" about the various perceptions occurring in

508-429: A degree of personal identity and to explain why it is that certain karmic results pertain to this particular individual. The seeds are momentary, but they give rise to a perfumed series which eventually culminates in the result including, from seeds of a particular type, the whole ‘inter-subjective’ phenomenal world." Also, Asanga and Vasubandhu write that the ālaya-vijñāna ‘ceases’ at awakening, becoming transformed into

635-547: A dream there appear, even without a thing/object ( artha ), just in the mind alone, forms/images of all kinds of things/objects like visibles, sounds, smells, tastes, tangibles, houses, forests, land, and mountains, and yet there are no [such] things/objects at all in that [place]. MSg II.6 Another classic statement of the doctrine appears in Dharmakīrti's Pramānaṿārttika ( Commentary on Epistemology ) which states: "cognition experiences itself, and nothing else whatsoever. Even

762-462: A dual self. What is its nonexistence? That by which the nondual reality is there. In detail, three natures ( trisvabhāva ) are: Various Buddhist studies scholars such as Alan Spongberg, Mario D'amato, Daniel McNamara, and Matthew T. Kapstein have noted that there are two main interpretations of the three natures doctrine among the various texts of the Yogacara corpus. The two models have been named

889-481: A finger can point at other things but not at itself, etc.). This means then, that the self could never desire to change itself and could not do so; another reason for this is that, besides Buddhism, in the orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy the unchanging ultimate self ( ātman ) is perfectly blissful and does not suffer. The historical Buddha used this idea to attack the concept of self. This argument could be structured thus: This argument then denies that there

1016-582: A form of pragmatism . However, K. N. Jayatilleke argues the Buddha's epistemology can also be taken to be a form of correspondence theory (as per the Apannaka Sutta ) with elements of coherentism , and that for the Buddha it is causally impossible for something which is false to lead to cessation of suffering and evil. Gautama Buddha discouraged his disciples and early followers of Buddhism from indulging in intellectual disputation for its own sake, which

1143-522: A form of idealism (as supported by Garfield, Hopkins, and others) or whether it is definitely not idealist (Anacker, Lusthaus, Wayman). According to Lambert Schmithausen , the earliest surviving appearance of this term is in chapter 8 of the Saṅdhinirmocana Sūtra , which has only survived in Tibetan and Chinese translations that differ in syntax and meaning. The passage is depicted as a response by

1270-578: A manuscript of the commentary by Jinendrabuddhi was discovered. Modern scholars working with The China Tibetology Research Center and the Austrian Academy of Sciences are currently working to extract and reconstruct the Sanskrit root text of the Pramāṇasamuccaya from the commentary in which it is embedded. Buddhist philosophy [REDACTED] Religion portal Buddhist philosophy

1397-421: A means to liberation or salvation. It was a tacit assumption with these systems that if their philosophy were correctly understood and assimilated, an unconditioned state free of suffering and limitation could be achieved. [...] If this fact is overlooked, as often happens as a result of the propensity engendered by formal Occidental philosophy to consider the philosophical enterprise as a purely descriptive one,

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1524-456: A nihilistic position which only affirms emptiness as the ultimate. Schmithausen notes that philological study of Yogacara texts shows that they clearly reject the independent existence of mind and the external world. He also notes that the current trend in rejecting the idealistic interpretation might be related to the unpopularity of idealism among Western academics. Florin Delenau likewise affirms

1651-514: A pot. Since we can be aware of a pot even when we are not "linked" to the potter's intentions (even after the potter is dead), a more complex series of mental interactions must be posited. Nevertheless, not all interpretations of Yogācāra's view of the external world rely on multiple relations between individual minds. Some interpretations in Chinese Buddhism , such as in Huayan , defended the view of

1778-446: A pragmatic point of view, it is best to abstain from these negative actions which bring forth negative results. However, the important word here is intentionally : for the Buddha, karma is nothing else but intention/volition, and hence unintentionally harming someone does not create bad karmic results. Unlike the Jains who believed that karma was a quasi-physical element, for the Buddha karma

1905-503: A pure consciousness. According to Waldron, while there were various similar concepts in other Buddhist Abhidharma schools which sought to explain karmic continuity, the ālaya-vijñāna is the most comprehensive and systematic. Waldron notes that the ālaya-vijñāna concept was probably influenced by these theories, particularly the Sautrantika theory of seeds and Vasumitra's theory of a subtle form of mind (suksma-citta) . Regarding

2032-648: A self-less construction and thus vijñapti-mātra is not the ultimate truth ( paramārtha-satya ) in Yogācāra. Thus according to Gold, while Vasubandhu's vijñapti-mātra can be said to be a “conventionalist idealism”, it is to be seen as unique and different from Western forms, especially Hegelian Absolute Idealism . The interpretation of Yogācāra as a type of idealism was standard until recently, when it began to be challenged by scholars such as Kochumuttom, Anacker, Kalupahana , Dunne, Lusthaus, Powers, and Wayman . Some scholars like David Kalupahana argue that it

2159-457: A single religious founder. While the focus of the Buddha's teachings is about attaining the highest good of nirvāṇa , they also contain an analysis of the source of human suffering ( duḥkha ), the nature of personal identity ( ātman ), and the process of acquiring knowledge ( prajña ) about the world. The Buddha defined his teaching as " the Middle Way " ( Pāli : majjhimāpaṭipadā ). In

2286-522: A single shared external world (bhājanaloka) which was still made of consciousness, while some later Indian thinkers like Ratnakīrti (11th century CE) defended a type of non-dual monism. This argument was famously defended in Dignāga's Ālambanaparīkṣā ( Examination of the Object of Consciousness ) and its main target is Indian atomism , which was the main theory of matter in the 5th century. The argument

2413-408: A slightly later period that still preceded the final redactions of the various Buddhist canons." According to some scholars, the philosophical outlook of earliest Buddhism was primarily negative, in the sense that it focused on what doctrines to reject and let go of more than on what doctrines to accept . Only knowledge that is useful in attaining liberation is valued. According to this theory,

2540-409: A true Self." The eighth consciousness, ālaya-vijñāna (storehouse or repository consciousness), was defined as the storehouse of all karmic seeds ( bīja ), where they gradually matured until ripe, at which point they manifested as karmic consequences. Because of this, it is also called the "mind which has all the seeds" ( sarvabījakam cittam ), as well as the "basis consciousness" ( mūla-vijñāna ) and

2667-461: A very subtle way of believing in an 'I'... once we see why physical objects can't exist we will lose all temptation to think there is a true ' me' within. There are really just impressions, but we superimpose on these the false constructions of object and subject. Seeing this will free us from the false conception of an 'I'. Siderits notes how Kant had a similar notion, that is, without the idea of an objective mind independent world, one cannot derive

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2794-417: A view which states "that the world as it appears to the unenlightened ones is mere representation of consciousness". Furthermore, according to Kochumuttom, in Yogācāra "the absolute state is defined simply as emptiness, namely the emptiness of subject-object distinction. Once thus defined as emptiness ( sunyata ), it receives a number of synonyms, none of which betray idealism." According to Dan Lusthaus ,

2921-403: A writhing of views, a fetter of views". One explanation for this pragmatic suspension of judgment or epistemic Epoché is that such questions contribute nothing to the practical methods of realizing awakeness during one's lifetime and bring about the danger of substituting the experience of liberation by a conceptual understanding of the doctrine or by religious faith. According to the Buddha,

3048-432: Is soteriologically important to get rid of the idea of really existing external objects. According to Siderits, this is because: When we wrongly imagine there to be external objects we are led to think in terms of the duality of 'grasped and grasper', of what is 'out there' and what is ' in here' - in short, of external world and self. Coming to see that there is no external world is a means, Vasubandhu thinks, of overcoming

3175-634: Is a mereological nihilism ), since they are composites and composites made of parts do not have any causal efficacy (only individual atoms do). In disproving the possibility of external objects, Vasubandhu's Vimśatikā similarly attacks Indian theories of atomism and property particulars as incoherent on mereological grounds. This argument was defended by Dharmakīrti in his Ascertainment of Epistemology ( Pramāṇaviniścaya ), which calls it "the necessity of things only ever being experienced together with experience" (Sanskrit: sahopalambhaniyama ) . According to Dharmakīrti: Because [something blue]

3302-409: Is a conceptual construction overlaid upon a stream of experiences, just like a chariot is merely a conventional designation for the parts of a chariot and how they are put together. The foundation of this argument is purely empiricist , for it is based on the fact that all we observe is subject to change, especially everything observed when looking inwardly in meditation. Another argument supporting

3429-506: Is a kind of trick built into consciousness which "projects and constructs a cognitive object in such a way that it disowns its own creation - pretending the object is "out there" - in order to render that object capable of being appropriated." This reification of cognition aids in constructing the notion of a permanent and independent self, which is believed to appropriate and possess external 'things'. Yogācāra offers an analysis and meditative means to negate this reification, thereby also negating

3556-582: Is a mistake to conflate the terms citta-mātra (which is sometimes seen as a different, more metaphysical position) with vijñapti-mātra (which need not be idealist). However, Delenau points out that Vasubandhu clearly states in his Twenty Verses and Abhidharmakosha that vijñapti and citta are synonymous. Nevertheless, different alternative translations for vijñapti-mātra have been proposed, such as representation-only, ideation-only, impressions-only and perception-only . Alex Wayman notes that one's interpretation of Yogācāra will depend on how

3683-457: Is also supported by Stefan Anacker. According to Thomas Kochumuttom, Yogācāra is a realistic pluralism which does not deny the existence of individual beings. Kochumuttom argues that Yogācāra is not idealism since it denies that absolute reality is a consciousness, that individual beings are transformations or illusory appearances of an absolute consciousness. Thus, for Kochumuttom, vijñapti-mātra means "mere representation of consciousness,"

3810-432: Is always dependent on, and caused by sensations gained by the sense organs ( āyatana ). Sensations are always dependent on contact with our surroundings. Buddha's causal theory is simply descriptive: "This existing, that exists; this arising, that arises; this not existing, that does not exist; this ceasing, that ceases." This understanding of causation as "impersonal lawlike causal ordering" is important because it shows how

3937-465: Is based on the premise that a perception must resemble the perceived object ( ālambana ) and have been caused by the object. According to this argument, since atoms are not extended, they do not resemble the object of perception (which appears as spatially extended). Furthermore, collections of atoms might resemble the object of perception, but they cannot have caused it. This is because collections of things are unreal in classic Buddhist thought (thus it

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4064-524: Is fruitless, and distracts one from the ultimate goals of awakening ( bodhi ) and liberation ( mokṣa ). Only philosophy and discussion which has pragmatic value for liberation from suffering is seen as important. According to the Pāli Canon , during his lifetime the Buddha remained silent when asked several metaphysical questions which he regarded as the basis for "unwise reflection". These "unanswered questions" ( avyākṛta ) regarded issues such as whether

4191-615: Is given by Walpola Rahula . According to Rahula, all the elements of this theory of consciousness with its three layers of vijñāna are already found in the Pāli Canon , corresponding to the terms viññāna (sense cognition), manas (mental function, thinking, reasoning, conception) and citta (the deepest layer of the aggregate of consciousness which retains karmic impressions and the defilements ). Yogācāra works often define three basic modes or "natures" ( svabhāva ) of experience. Jonathan Gold explains that "the three natures are all one reality viewed from three distinct angles. They are

4318-511: Is just as good at explaining the relevant phenomena of experience as any theory of realism that posits external objects. Therefore, he then applies the Indian philosophical principle termed the "Principle of Lightness" (Sanskrit: lāghava, which is similar to Occam's Razor ) to rule out realism since vijñapti-mātra is the simpler and "lighter" theory which "posits the least number of unobservable entities." Another objection that Vasubandhu answers

4445-524: Is no physical medium or object in existence, since a suitably strong enough intention in one mind stream can have effects on another mind stream. From the mind-only position, it is easier to posit a mind to mind causation than to have to explain mind to body causation, which the realist must do. However, Siderits then goes on to question whether Vasubandhu's position is indeed "lighter" since he must make use of multiple interactions between different minds to take into account an intentionally created artifact, like

4572-487: Is not apprehended without the additional qualification of consciousness, [and] because [blue] is apprehended when this [qualification of consciousness] is apprehended, consciousness [itself] has the appearance of blue. There is no external object by itself. (PV 3.335) According this argument, any object of consciousness, like blue, cannot be differentiated from the conscious awareness of blue since both are always experienced as one thing. Since we never experience blue without

4699-410: Is not worried about something that does not exist. Furthermore, Gautama Buddha argued that the world can be observed to be a cause of suffering ( Brahman was held to be ultimately blissful in the orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy ) and that since we cannot control the world as we wish, the world cannot be the self. The idea that "this cosmos is the self" is one of the six wrong views rejected by

4826-416: Is often used interchangeably with the term citta-mātra in modern and ancient Yogacara sources. The standard translation of both terms is "consciousness-only" or "mind-only." Several modern researchers object to this translation in favor of alternative like representation-only . The meaning of this term is at the heart of the modern scholarly disagreement about whether Yogacara Buddhism can be said to be

4953-565: Is one permanent "controller" in the person. Instead, it views the person as a set of constantly changing processes which include volitional events seeking change and an awareness of that desire for change. According to Mark Siderits: What the Buddhist has in mind is that on one occasion one part of the person might perform the executive function, on another occasion another part might do so. This would make it possible for every part to be subject to control without there being any part that always fills

5080-573: Is primarily meant to aid in the practice of yoga and meditation and thus it also sets forth a systematic analysis of the Mahayana path of mental training (see five paths pañcamārga ). Yogācārins made use of ideas from previous traditions, such as Prajñāpāramitā and the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma tradition, to develop a novel analysis of conscious experience and a corresponding schema for Mahāyāna spiritual practice. Yogācāra works like

5207-406: Is similar to Idealism (and they compare it to the idealisms of Kant and Berkeley ), though they note that it is its own unique form and that it might be confusing to categorize it as such. The German scholar and philologist Lambert Schmithausen affirms that Yogacara sources teach a type of idealism which is supposed to be a middle way between Abhidharma realism and what it often considered

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5334-513: Is sometimes used as a synonym with citta-mātra (mere citta ), which is also used as a name for the school that suggests Idealism . Schmithausen writes that the first appearance of this term is in the Pratyupanna samadhi sutra , which states "this (or: whatever belongs to this) triple world is nothing but mind (or thought: * cittamatra ). Why? Because however I imagine things, that is how they appear." Regarding existing Sanskrit sources,

5461-539: Is still clear that resisting and even refuting a false or slanted doctrine can be useful to extricate the interlocutor, or oneself, from error; hence, to advance in the way of liberation. Witness the Buddha's confutation of several doctrines by Nigantha Nataputta and other purported sages which sometimes had large followings (e.g., Kula Sutta, Sankha Sutta, Brahmana Sutta). This shows that a virtuous and appropriate use of dialectics can take place. By implication, reasoning and argument shouldn't be disparaged by Buddhists. After

5588-428: Is that of how one person can influence another's experiences, if everything arises from mental karmic seeds in one's mind stream. Vasubandhu argues that "impressions can also be caused in a mental stream by the occurrence of a distinct impression in another suitably linked mental stream." As Siderits notes, this account can explain how it is possible to influence or even totally disrupt (murder) another mind, even if there

5715-667: Is that this unease arises out of conditions, mainly craving ( taṇhā ) and ignorance ( avidyā ). The third truth is then the fact that whenever sentient beings let go of craving and remove ignorance through insight and knowledge, suffering ceases ( nirodhā ). The fourth truth is the Noble Eightfold Path , which consists of eight practices that end suffering. They are: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness , and right samādhi (concentration, mental unification, meditation). The highest good and ultimate goal taught by

5842-549: Is that we are only ever aware of mental images or impressions which manifest themselves as external objects, but "there is actually no such thing outside the mind." The term also appears in Asaṅga's classic work, the Mahāyānasaṃgraha (no Sanskrit original, trans. from Tibetan) : These representations ( vijñapti ) are mere representations ( vijñapti-mātra ), because there is no [corresponding] thing/object ( artha )...Just as in

5969-400: Is the ancient Indian philosophical system that developed within the religio-philosophical tradition of Buddhism . It comprises all the philosophical investigations and systems of rational inquiry that developed among various schools of Buddhism in ancient India following the parinirvāṇa of Gautama Buddha (c. 5th century BCE), as well as the further developments which followed

6096-418: Is the inherent and eternal unsatisfactoriness of life. This unpleasantness is said to be not just physical pain and psychological distress, but also a kind of existential unease caused by the inevitable facts of our mortality and ultimately by the impermanence of all beings and phenomena . Suffering also arises because of contact with unpleasant events, and due to not getting what one desires. The second truth

6223-619: The Dharma is not an ultimate end in itself or an explanation of all metaphysical reality, but a pragmatic set of teachings. The Buddha used two parables to clarify this point, the 'Parable of the raft' and the Parable of the Poisoned Arrow . The Dharma is like a raft in the sense that it is only a pragmatic tool for attaining nirvana ("for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of holding onto", MN 22); once one has done this, one can discard

6350-474: The Dharmacakrapravartana Sūtra , this is used to refer to the fact that his teachings steer a middle course between the extremes of asceticism and bodily denial (as practiced by the Jains and other Indian ascetic groups) and sensual hedonism or indulgence. Many Śramaṇa ascetics of the Buddha's time placed much emphasis on a denial of the body, using practices such as fasting , to liberate

6477-514: The Kālāma Sutta the Buddha tells a group of confused villagers that the only proper reason for one's beliefs is verification in one's own personal experience (and the experience of the wise) and denies any verification which stems from a personal authority, sacred tradition ( anussava ), or any kind of rationalism which constructs metaphysical theories ( takka ). In the Tevijja Sutta (DN 13),

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6604-425: The Saṅdhinirmocana Sūtra developed various core concepts such as vijñapti-mātra , the ālaya-vijñāna (store consciousness), the turning of the basis ( āśraya-parāvṛtti), the three natures ( trisvabhāva ), and emptiness . These form a complex system, and each can be taken as a point of departure for understanding Yogācāra. One of the main features of Yogācāra philosophy is the concept of vijñapti-mātra . It

6731-669: The Gandhāran Buddhist texts (which are the earliest manuscripts containing discourses attributed to Gautama Buddha), has confirmed that their teachings are "consistent with non-Mahayana Buddhism, which survives today in the Theravada school of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, but which in ancient times was represented by eighteen separate schools." However, some scholars such as Schmithausen , Vetter , and Bronkhorst argue that critical analysis reveals discrepancies among these various doctrines. They present alternative possibilities for what

6858-515: The Mādhyamaka and Sautrāntika schools of Buddhist philosophy in ancient India, Peter Deller Santina writes: Attention must first of all be drawn to the fact that philosophical systems in India were seldom, if ever, purely speculative or descriptive. Virtually all the great philosophical systems of India: Sāṃkhya , Advaita Vedānta , Mādhyamaka and so forth, were preeminently concerned with providing

6985-556: The Vedas as providing access to truth. The historical Buddha denied the authority of the Vedas , though, like his contemporaries, he affirmed the soteriological importance of holding the right view ; that is, having a proper understanding of reality. However, this understanding was not conceived primarily as metaphysical and cosmological knowledge, but as a piece of knowledge into the arising and cessation of suffering in human experience. Therefore,

7112-609: The philosophy of mind , the philosophy of time , and soteriology in their analysis of these paths. Pre-sectarian Buddhism was based on empirical evidence gained by the sense organs (including the mind ), and the Buddha seems to have retained a skeptical distance from certain metaphysical questions , refusing to answer them because they were not conducive to liberation but led instead to further speculation. However he also affirmed theories with metaphysical implications, such as dependent arising , karma , and rebirth . Particular points of Buddhist philosophy have often been

7239-476: The spread of Buddhism throughout Asia . Buddhism combines both philosophical reasoning and the practice of meditation . The Buddhist religion presents a multitude of Buddhist paths to liberation ; with the expansion of early Buddhism from ancient India to Sri Lanka and subsequently to East Asia and Southeast Asia , Buddhist thinkers have covered topics as varied as cosmology , ethics , epistemology , logic , metaphysics , ontology , phenomenology ,

7366-499: The vijñapti-mātra theory is closer in some ways to Western Phenomenological theories and Epistemological Idealism . However, it is not a form of metaphysical idealism because Yogācāra rejects the construction of any type of metaphysical or ontological theories. Moreover, Western idealism lacks any counterpart to karma, samsara or awakening, all of which are central for Yogācāra. Regarding vijñapti-mātra, Lusthaus translates it as "nothing but conscious construction" and states it

7493-499: The ālaya-vijñāna, being a kind of vijñāna, has an object as well (as all vijñāna has intentionality ). That object is the sentient being's surrounding world, that is to say, the "receptable" or "container" ( bhājana ) world. This is stated in the 8th chapter of the Saṅdhinirmocana Sūtra, which states that the ādānavijñāna is characterized by "an unconscious (or not fully conscious?) steady perception (or "representation") of

7620-563: The "appropriating consciousness" ( ādānavijñāna ). According to the Saṅdhinirmocana Sūtra , this kind of consciousness underlies and supports the six types of manifest awareness, all of which occur simultaneously with the ālaya. William S. Waldron sees this "simultaneity of all the modes of cognitive awareness" as the most significant departure of Yogācāra theory from traditional Buddhist models of vijñāna, which were "thought to occur solely in conjunction with their respective sense bases and epistemic objects". As noted by Schmithausen ,

7747-457: The "pivot" model and "progressive" model by these Western scholars. The "pivot" model, found in texts like the Triṃśikā and the Mahāyānasaṃgraha , presents the dependent nature as a kind of "ontological pivot" since it is the basis for conceptual construction (the imagined nature) and for the perfected nature (which is nothing but absence of the imagined nature in the dependent nature). As such,

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7874-502: The Abhidharma analysis was ultimate truth (paramattha sacca), the way things really are when seen by an enlightened being. The Abhidharmic project has been likened as a form of phenomenology or process philosophy . Abhidharma philosophers not only outlined what they believed to be an exhaustive listing of dharmas (Pali: dhammas), which are the ultimate phenomena, events or processes (and include physical and mental phenomena), but also

8001-585: The Brahmanical belief expounded in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad that the unchanging ultimate self ( ātman ) was indeed the whole world, or identical with Brahman . This concept is illustrated in the Alagaddupama Sūtra , where the Buddha argues that an individual cannot experience the suffering of the entire world. He used the example of someone carrying off and burning grass and sticks from

8128-469: The Buddha a belief counts as truth only if it leads to successful Buddhist practice (and hence, to the destruction of craving). In the "Discourse to Prince Abhaya" (MN.I.392–4) the Buddha states this pragmatic maxim by saying that a belief should only be accepted if it leads to wholesome consequences. This tendency of the Buddha to see what is true as what was useful or "what works" has been called by Western scholars such as Mrs Rhys Davids and Vallée-Poussin

8255-645: The Buddha must at least have taught some of these key teachings: According to N. Ross Reat, all of these doctrines are shared by the Pāli Canon of Theravāda Buddhism and the Śālistamba Sūtra belonging to the Mahāsāṃghika school. A recent study by Bhikkhu Analayo concludes that the Theravādin Majjhima Nikāya and the Sarvāstivādin Madhyama Āgama contain mostly the same major Buddhist doctrines. Richard G. Salomon , in his study of

8382-489: The Buddha rejects the personal authority of Brahmins because none of them can prove they have had personal experience of Brahman , nor could any of them prove its existence. The Buddha also stressed that experience is the only criterion for verification of the truth in this passage from the Majjhima Nikāya (MN.I.265): Furthermore, the Buddha's standard for personal verification was a pragmatic and salvific one, for

8509-423: The Buddha to a question which asks "whether the images or replicas ( *pratibimba ) which are the object ( *gocara ) of meditative concentration (* samadhi ), are different/separate ( *bhinna ) from the contemplating mind ( *citta ) or not." The Buddha says they are not different, "Because these images are vijñapti-mātra." The text goes on to affirm that the same is true for objects of ordinary perception. The term

8636-509: The Buddha's death, some Buddhists such as Dharmakirti went on to use the sayings of the Buddha as sound evidence equal to perception and inference. Another possible reason why the Buddha refused to engage in metaphysics is that he saw ultimate reality and nirvana as devoid of sensory mediation and conception and therefore language itself is a priori inadequate to explain it. Thus, the Buddha's silence does not indicate misology or disdain for philosophy. Rather, it indicates that he viewed

8763-412: The Buddha's epistemic project is different from that of modern philosophy ; it is primarily a solution to the fundamental human spiritual/existential problem. Gautama Buddha 's logico-epistemology has been compared to empiricism , in the sense that it was based on the experience of the world through the senses . The Buddha taught that empirical observation through the six sense fields ( āyatanā )

8890-581: The Buddha's teachings as recorded in the Gandhāran Buddhist texts , we need to train the mind in meditation to be able to truly comprehend the nature of reality, which is said to have the Three marks of existence : suffering, impermanence, and non-self ( anātman ). Understanding and meditation are said to work together to clearly see ( vipassanā ) the nature of human experience and this is said to lead to liberation. Gautama Buddha argued that compounded entities and sentient beings lacked essence, correspondingly

9017-514: The Jeta grove and how a monk would not sense or consider themselves harmed by that action. In this example, the Buddha is arguing that we do not have direct experience of the entire world, and hence the self cannot be the whole world. In this Buddhist text, as well as in the Soattā Sūtra , the Buddha outlines six wrong views about self: There are six wrong views: An unwise, untrained person may think of

9144-542: The Receptacle ( *asaṃvidita-sthira-bhājana-vijñapti )." The ālaya-vijñāna is also what experiences rebirth into future lives and what descends into the womb to appropriate the fetal material. Therefore, the ālaya-vijñāna's holding on to the body's sense faculties and "profuse imaginings" ( prapañca ) are the two appropriations which make up the "kindling" or "fuel" (lit. upādāna ) that samsaric existence depends upon. Yogācāra thought thus holds that being unaware of

9271-473: The Three Natures ) gives a brief definition of these three natures: What appears is the dependent. How it appears is the fabricated. Because of being dependent on conditions. Because of being only fabrication. The eternal non-existence of the appearance as it is appears: That is known to be the perfected nature, because of being always the same. What appears there? The unreal fabrication. How does it appear? As

9398-442: The Yogācāra school was the doctrine of eight consciousnesses. These "eight bodies of consciousnesses" ( aṣṭa vijñānakāyāḥ ) are: the five sense -consciousnesses (of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and bodily sense), mentation (mano or citta ), the defiled self-consciousness ( kliṣṭamanovijñāna ), and the storehouse or substratum consciousness ( Skt: ālayavijñāna ). Traditional Buddhist descriptions of consciousness taught just

9525-456: The answers to these questions as not understandable by the unenlightened. Dependent arising provides a framework for analysis of reality that is not based on metaphysical assumptions regarding existence or non-existence, but instead on direct cognition of phenomena as they are presented to the mind in meditation. The Buddha of the earliest Buddhists texts describes Dharma (in the sense of "truth") as "beyond reasoning" or "transcending logic", in

9652-407: The appearance of a permanent self in this world of change is the cause of suffering ( duḥkha ), and the main obstacle to the attainment of spiritual liberation ( mokṣa ). The most widely used argument that the Buddha employed against the idea of an unchanging ego is an empiricist one, based on the observation of the five aggregates of existence ( skandhā ) that constitute a sentient being, and

9779-431: The appearance, the process, and the emptiness of that same apparent entity." According to Paul Williams , "all things which can be known can be subsumed under these Three Natures." Since this schema is Yogācāra's systematic explanation of the Buddhist doctrine of emptiness ( śūnyatā ), each of the three natures are also explained as having a lack of own-nature ( niḥsvabhāvatā ). The Trisvabhāva-nirdeśa ( Exposition of

9906-487: The body, 'This is mine, this is me, this is my self'; he may think that of feelings; of perceptions; of volitions; or of what has been seen, heard, thought, cognized, reached, sought or considered by the mind. The sixth is to identify the world and self, to believe: 'At death, I shall become permanent, eternal, unchanging, and so remain forever the same; and that is mine, that is me, that is my self.' A wise and well-trained person sees that all these positions are wrong, and so he

10033-469: The causal relations between them. In the Abhidharmic analysis, the only thing which is ultimately real is the interplay of dharmas in a causal stream; everything else is merely conceptual ( paññatti ) and nominal. Yogacara The compound Yogācāra literally means "practitioner of yoga ", or "one whose practice is yoga", hence the name of the school is literally "the school of the yogins". Yogācāra

10160-418: The classic philosophers and systematizers of this school, along with the figure of Maitreya . Yogācāra was later imported to Tibet and East Asia by figures like Shantaraksita (8th century) and Xuanzang (7th-century). Today, Yogācāra ideas and texts continue to be influential subjects of study for Tibetan Buddhism and East Asian Buddhism . [REDACTED] Religion portal Yogācāra philosophy

10287-406: The concept of a subjective "I". But Kant drew the opposite conclusion to Vasubandhu, since he held that we must believe in an enduring subject, and thus, also believe in external objects. Yogācāra gives a detailed explanation of the workings of the mind and the way it constructs the reality we experience. The central Yogācāra theory of mind is that of the eight consciousnesses. A key innovation of

10414-711: The constant co-cognition argument. This argument is found in Vasubandhu's Vimśatikā ( Twenty Verses ) and is an inference to the best explanation . It argues that consciousness-only can provide an account of the various features of experience which are explained by the existence of mind-independent material objects. This is coupled with a principle of ontological parsimony to argue in favor of idealism. Vasubandhu mentions three key features of experience which are supposed to be explained by matter and refutes them: According to Mark Siderits, after disposing of these objections, Vasubandhu believes he has shown that mere cognizance

10541-531: The cycle of philosophical upheavals that in part drove the diversification of Buddhism into its many schools and sects only began once Buddhists began attempting to make explicit the implicit philosophy of the Buddha and the early texts. The Four Noble Truths or "Truths of the Noble One" are a central feature to the teachings of the historical Buddha and are put forth in the Dharmacakrapravartana Sūtra . The first truth of duḥkha , often translated as "suffering",

10668-460: The desire to find a Middle Way between philosophical views seen as extreme. Edward Conze splits the development of Indian Buddhist philosophy into three phases: Various elements of these three phases are incorporated and/or further developed in the philosophy and worldview of the various sects of Buddhism that then emerged. Philosophy in ancient India was aimed mainly at spiritual liberation and had soteriological goals. In his study of

10795-513: The differentiation of "my" suffering and someone else's. Instead, an enlightened person would just work to end suffering tout court , without thinking of the conventional concept of persons. According to this argument, anyone who is selfish does so out of ignorance of the true nature of personal identity and irrationality. The main Indian Buddhist philosophical schools practiced a form of analysis termed Abhidharma which sought to systematize

10922-458: The doctrine of non-self , the "argument from lack of control", is based on the fact that we often seek to change certain parts of ourselves, that the "executive function" of the mind is that which finds certain things unsatisfactory and attempts to alter them. Furthermore, it is also based on the "anti-reflexivity principle" of Indian philosophy , which states an entity cannot operate on or control itself (a knife can cut other things but not itself,

11049-470: The experience of blue, they cannot be differentiated empirically . Furthermore, we cannot differentiate them through an inference either, since this would need to be based on a pattern of past experiences which included the absence or presence of the two elements. Thus, this is a type of epistemological argument for idealism which attempts to show there is no good reason to accept the existence of mind-independent objects. Vasubandhu also explains why it

11176-464: The eye, ear, etc.), and six consciousnesses "exhaust the full extent of everything in the universe, or more accurately, the sensorium ." The six consciousnesses are also not substantial entities, but a series or stream of events (dharmas), which arise and vanish very rapidly moment by moment. This is the Abhidharma doctrine of "momentariness" (kṣaṇavada), which Yogācāra also accepts. Yogācāra expanded

11303-446: The fact that these are always changing. This argument can be put in this way: This argument requires the implied premise that the five aggregates are an exhaustive account of what makes up a person, or else the self could exist outside of these aggregates. This premise is affirmed in other Buddhist texts , such as Saṃyutta Nikāya 22.47, which states: "whatever ascetics and brahmins regard various kinds of things as self, all regard

11430-473: The first six vijñānas , each corresponding to a sense base ( ayatana ) and having their own sense objects (sounds etc). Five are based on the five senses, while the sixth ( mano-vijñāna), was seen as the surveyor of the content of the five senses as well as of mental content like thoughts and ideas. Standard Buddhist doctrine held that these eighteen "elements" (dhatus), i.e. six external sense bases (smells, sounds etc.), six internal bases (sense organs like

11557-526: The five grasping aggregates, or one of them." This argument is famously expounded in the Anātmalakṣaṇa Sūtra . According to this text, the apparently fixed self is merely the result of identification with the temporary aggregates of existence ( skandhā ), the changing processes making up an individual human being. In this view, a 'person' is only a convenient nominal designation on a certain grouping of processes and characteristics, and an 'individual'

11684-466: The gradual training also requires that a disciple "investigate" ( upaparikkhati ) and "scrutinize" ( tuleti ) the teachings. The Buddha also expected his disciples to approach him as a teacher in a critical fashion and scrutinize his actions and words, as shown in the Vīmaṃsaka Sutta . Some Buddhist thinkers even argued that rational reflection and philosophical analysis was a central practice which

11811-419: The highest happiness. This perspective sees immoral acts as unskillful ( akusala ) in our quest for happiness, and hence it is pragmatic to do good. The third meta-ethical consideration takes the view of not-self and our natural desire to end our suffering to its logical conclusion. Since there is no self, there is no reason to prefer our own welfare over that of others because there is no ultimate grounding for

11938-542: The historical Buddha, along with the related monistic Hindu theology which held that "everything is a Oneness" (SN 12.48 Lokayatika Sutta ). The historical Buddha also held that understanding and seeing the truth of non-self led to un-attachment, and hence to the cessation of suffering, while ignorance ( avidyā ) about the true nature of personality ( prajña ) led to further suffering and attachment. All schools of Indian philosophy recognize various sets of valid justifications for knowledge ( pramāṇa ) and many see

12065-408: The historical Buddha, which is the attainment of nirvāṇa , literally means "extinguishing" and signified "the complete extinguishing of greed, hatred, and delusion (i.e. ignorance ), the forces which power saṃsāra ". Nirvāṇa also means that after an enlightened being 's death, there is no further rebirth. In earliest Buddhism , the concept of dependent origination ( pratītya-samutpāda )

12192-408: The idealist nature of Yogācāra texts, while also underscoring how Yogācāra retains a strong orientation to a soteriology which aims at contemplative realization of an ultimate reality that is an ‘inexpressible essence’ ( nirabhilāpyasvabhāva ) beyond any subject-object duality. Similarly, Jonathan Gold writes that the Yogācāra thinker Vasubandhu can be said to be an idealist (similar to Kant ), in

12319-513: The middle" ( majjhena dhammaṃ desana ), which claims to be a metaphysical middle path between the extremes of eternalism and annihilationism , as well as the extremes of existence and non-existence. This idea would become central to later Buddhist metaphysics, as all Buddhist philosophies would claim to steer a metaphysical middle course. Apart from the middle way, certain basic teachings appear in many places throughout these early Buddhist texts , so older studies by various scholars conclude that

12446-407: The mind from the body. Gautama Buddha , however, realized that the mind was embodied and causally dependent on the body, and therefore that a malnourished body did not allow the mind to be trained and developed. Thus, Buddhism's main concern is not with luxury or poverty, but instead with the human response to circumstances. Another related teaching of the historical Buddha is "the teaching through

12573-417: The nirvanic life. The Buddha outlined five precepts (no killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, or drinking alcohol) which were to be followed by his disciples, lay and monastic. There are various reasons the Buddha gave as to why someone should be ethical. First, the universe is structured in such a way that if someone intentionally commits a misdeed, a bad karmic fruit will be the result. Hence, from

12700-471: The notion of a solid self. According to Lusthaus, this analysis is not a rejection of external phenomena, and it does not grant foundational or transcendent status to consciousness. In this interpretation, instead of offering an ontological theory, Yogācāra focuses on understanding and eliminating the underlying tendencies ( anuśaya ) that lead to clinging concepts and theories, which are just cognitive projections ( pratibimba , parikalpita ). Thus, for Lusthaus,

12827-475: The orientation of the Yogācāra school is largely consistent with the thinking of the Pāli nikāyas and seeks to realign Mahayana with early Buddhist theory. According to the contemporary philosopher Jan Westerhoff, Yogācāra philosophers came up with various arguments in defense of the consciousness-only view. He outlines three main arguments: the explanatory equivalence argument, the causation-resemblance argument, and

12954-470: The particular objects of perception, are by nature just consciousness itself." According to Bruce Cameron Hall, the interpretation of this doctrine as a form of subjective or absolute idealism has been "the most common 'outside' interpretation of Vijñānavāda , not only by modern writers, but by its ancient opponents, both Hindu and Buddhist." Scholars such as Jay Garfield , Saam Trivedi, Nobuyoshi Yamabe, Paul Williams, and Sean Butler argue that Yogācāra

13081-443: The processes going on in the ālaya-vijñāna is an important element of ignorance ( avidya ). The ālaya is also individual, so that each person has their own ālaya-vijñāna, which is an ever changing process and therefore not a permanent self. According to Williams, this consciousness "seen as a defiled form of consciousness (or perhaps sub- or unconsciousness), is personal, individual, continually changing and yet serving to give

13208-492: The processes that give rise to suffering work, and also how they can be reversed. The removal of suffering that stemmed from ignorance ( avidyā ), then, requires a deep understanding of the nature of reality ( prajña ). While philosophical analysis of arguments and concepts is clearly necessary to develop this understanding, it is not enough to remove our unskillful mental habits and deeply ingrained prejudices, which require meditation , paired with understanding. According to

13335-419: The qualifier mātra is to be understood in this context, and he objects to interpretations which claim that Yogācāra rejects the external world altogether, preferring translations such as "amounting to mind" or "mirroring mind" for citta-mātra . For Wayman, what this doctrine means is that "the mind has only a report or representation of what the sense organ had sensed." The representationalist interpretation

13462-429: The raft. It is also like medicine, in that the particulars of how one was injured by a poisoned arrow (i.e. metaphysics, etc.) do not matter in the act of removing and curing the arrow wound itself (removing suffering). In this sense, the Buddha was often called "the great physician" because his goal was to cure the human condition of suffering first and foremost, not to speculate about metaphysics. Having said this, it

13589-408: The real significance of Indian and Buddhist philosophy will be missed. For the Indian Buddhist philosophers, the teachings of Gautama Buddha were not meant to be taken on faith alone, but to be confirmed by logical analysis and inquiry ( pramāṇa ) of the world. The early Buddhist texts mention that a person becomes a follower of the Buddha's teachings after having pondered them over with wisdom and

13716-422: The role of the controller (and so is the self). On some occasions, a given part might fall on the controller side, while on other occasions it might fall on the side of the controlled. This would explain how it's possible for us to seek to change any of the skandhas while there is nothing more to us than just those skandhas. As noted by K.R. Norman and Richard Gombrich, the Buddha extended his non-self critique to

13843-469: The self is without essence ( anātman ). This means there is no part of a person which is unchanging and essential for continuity, and it means that there is no individual "part of the person that accounts for the identity of that person over time". This is in opposition to the Upanishadic concept of an unchanging ultimate self ( ātman ) and any view of an eternal soul . The Buddha held that attachment to

13970-492: The sense that for him, everything in experience as well as its causal support is mental, and thus he gives causal priority to the mental. At the same time however, this is only in the conventional realm, since "mind" is just another concept and true reality for Vasubandhu is ineffable, "an inconceivable 'thusness' ( tathatā )." Indeed, the Vimśatikā states that the very idea of vijñapti-mātra must also be understood to be itself

14097-441: The sense that reasoning is a subjectively introduced aspect of the way unenlightened humans perceive things, and the conceptual framework which underpins their cognitive process, rather than a feature of things as they really are. Going "beyond reasoning" means in this context penetrating the nature of reasoning from the inside, and removing the causes for experiencing any future stress as a result of it, rather than functioning outside

14224-409: The six vijñāna schema into a new system which with two new categories. The seventh consciousness developed from the early Buddhist concept of manas , and was seen as the defiled mentation ( kliṣṭa-manas ) which is obsessed with notions of "self". According to Paul Williams , this consciousness "takes the substratum consciousness as its object and mistakenly considers the substratum consciousness to be

14351-574: The status of the seeds, according to the Chengweishilun , Sthiramati regarded the seeds to be merely nominal (i.e. conventional and not actually real); while on the other hand, Xuanzang took them to be real. Yogācāra sources do not necessarily describe the eight consciousnesses as absolutely separate or substantial phenomena. For example, Kalupahana notes that the Triṃśika describes the various forms of consciousness as transformations and functions of

14478-483: The stream of consciousness". The ālaya is defiled by this self-interest. The third transformation is visaya-vijñapti , the " concept of the object". In this transformation the concept of objects is created. By creating these concepts human beings become "susceptible to grasping after the object" as if it were a real object ( sad artha ) even though it is just a conception ( vijñapti ). A similar perspective which emphasizes Yogācāra's continuity with early Buddhism

14605-539: The subject of disputes between different schools of Buddhism, as well as between representative thinkers of Buddhist schools and Hindu or Jaina philosophers. These elaborations and disputes gave rise to various early Buddhist schools of Abhidharma , the Mahāyāna movement , and scholastic traditions such as Prajñāpāramitā , Sarvāstivāda , Mādhyamaka , Sautrāntika , Vaibhāṣika , Buddha-nature , Yogācāra , and more. One recurrent theme in Buddhist philosophy has been

14732-565: The system as a whole. The Buddha's ethics are based on the soteriological need to eliminate suffering and on the premise of the law of karma . Buddhist ethics have been termed eudaimonic (with their goal being well-being) and also compared to virtue ethics (this approach began with Damien Keown). Keown writes that Buddhist Nirvana is analogous to the Aristotelian Eudaimonia , and that Buddhist moral acts and virtues derive their value from how they lead us to or act as an aspect of

14859-441: The teachings of the early Buddhist discourses (sutras). Abhidharma analysis broke down human experience into momentary phenomenal events or occurrences called " dharmas ". Dharmas are impermanent and dependent on other causal factors, they arise and pass as part of a web of other interconnected dharmas, and are never found alone. The Abhidharma schools held that the teachings of the Buddha in the sutras were merely conventional, while

14986-429: The term appears in the first verse of Vasubandhu's Vimśatikā ( Twenty Verses ), which states: This [world] is vijñaptimātra , since it manifests itself as an unreal object ( artha ), just like the case of those with cataracts seeing unreal hairs in the moon and the like ( vijñaptimātram evaitad asad arthāvabhāsanāt yathā taimirikasyāsat keśa candrādi darśanam ). According to Mark Siderits, what Vasubandhu means here

15113-465: The universe is eternal or non-eternal (or whether it is finite or infinite), the unity or separation of the body and the self ( ātman ), the complete inexistence of a person after death and nirvāṇa , and others. In the Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta , the historical Buddha stated that thinking about these imponderable issues led to "a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views,

15240-474: Was a later addition. according to Vetter and Bronkhorst, dhyāna constituted the original "liberating practice", while discriminating insight into transiency as a separate path to liberation was a later development. Scholars such as Bronkhorst and Carol Anderson also think that the Four Noble Truths may not have been formulated in earliest Buddhism but as Anderson writes "emerged as a central teaching in

15367-510: Was a volitional mental event, what Richard Gombrich calls "an ethicised consciousness". This idea leads into the second moral justification of the Buddha: intentionally performing negative actions reinforces and propagates mental defilements which keep persons bound to the cycle of rebirth and interfere with the process of liberation, and hence intentionally performing good karmic actions is participating in mental purification which leads to nirvana ,

15494-400: Was also variously termed Vijñānavāda (the doctrine of consciousness), Vijñaptivāda (the doctrine of ideas or percepts ) or Vijñaptimātratā-vāda (the doctrine of 'mere representation'), which is also the name given to its major theory of mind which seeks to deconstruct how we perceive the world. There are several interpretations of this main theory: various forms of Idealism , as well as

15621-471: Was engaged in philosophical inquiry. Siddartha Gautama (c. 5th century BCE) was a north Indian Śramaṇa (wandering ascetic), whose teachings are preserved in the Pāli Nikayas and in the Āgamas as well as in other surviving fragmentary textual collections, collectively known as the early Buddhist texts . Dating these texts is difficult, and there is disagreement on how much of this material goes back to

15748-424: Was most likely limited to processes of mental conditioning and not to all physical phenomena. Gautama Buddha understood the world in procedural terms, not in terms of things or substances. His theory posits a flux of events arising under certain conditions which are interconnected and dependent, such that the processes in question at no time are considered to be static or independent. Craving ( taṇhā ), for example,

15875-498: Was necessary for the attainment of insight in meditation. Thus, Mahayana philosophers like Prajñakaragupta argue that one is not a yogi "merely because of meditation ", rather, one must meditate, listen to the teachings and understand them by "reflecting through rational inquiry" (yukti-cintāmaya). Only through this method which combined rational reflection and meditation will the wisdom that leads to enlightenment arise. Scholarly opinion varies as to whether Gautama Buddha himself

16002-429: Was taught in earliest Buddhism and question the authenticity of certain teachings and doctrines. For example, some scholars think that the doctrine of karma was not central to the teachings of the historical Buddha, while others disagree with this position. Likewise, there is scholarly disagreement on whether insight into the true nature of reality ( prajña ) was seen as liberating in earliest Buddhism or whether it

16129-515: Was the proper way of verifying any knowledge claims. Some Buddhist texts go further, stating that "the All", or everything that exists ( sabbam ), are these six sense spheres (SN 35.23, Sabba Sutta ) and that anyone who attempts to describe another "All" will be unable to do so because "it lies beyond range". This text seems to indicate that for the Buddha, things in themselves or noumena are beyond our epistemological reach ( avisaya ). Furthermore, in

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