DESCRIPTION
This Session introduces the so-called 'Mind-Only' school of Buddhism, also called Yogacara or Vijñānavada. This school originated in India in the 4th Century AD and spread to China where it became known as the Faxiang (’Characteristics of Dharmas’) School, founded during the 7th Century AD by the celebrated Pilgrim monk Xuanzang.
The basic premise of this school is that any thing (dharma), ‘existent’ or ‘non-existent’, ‘real’ or ‘unreal’, is always, only an idea - a concept of that thing and not that thing ‘itself’. This radical form of phenomenology, which Buddhist Philosophy was already a form of, would eventually come to be called ‘Idealism’ in Western Philosophy, beginning with Kant in the late 18th Century, paving the way for modern philosophical movements such as Existentialism, wherein the subjective experience is the initial starting point of inquiry rather than a presumed ‘external’ objective world.
Primary Text
This is a late-Mahāyāna sutra that represents the so-called 'Third Turning of the Dharma Wheel’, in which the teaching of Vijñapti-mātra ('Consciousness-Only') is underscored. Texts such as the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra ('Revealing the Hidden Meaning') became foundational for Tibetan and Chinese Buddhism, while the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, also a ‘mind-only’ text, was the basis for many early schools of Zen in China.
Suggested Reading
Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhist, The Doctrinal Foundations, Chapter Four
Reb Anderson, The Third Turning of the Wheel: Wisdom of the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra. Rodmell Press, 2012.