In his recorded utterances, the Buddha repeatedly states that his ideas are not intended to be a darsana or philosophy but a yana or vehicle, a practical method leading to enlightenment. Consistently with this view, and with his refusal to speculate about what lies beyond or behind human experience, the Buddha made no attempt to set out a metaphysical basis for his vehicle for the relief of suffering. However, as Radhakrishnan suggests, it seems that there is in human beings an inbuilt need to speculate about ultimate questions, and for this view the subsequent history of Buddhism provides ample evidence.1 Unable to resist the urge to fill in the deliberate omissions of the Buddha, later generations of Buddhists added their own metaphysics and epistemologies to complete the picture he left, their differences generating the various schools in the history of Buddhism. The major division is that between the Theravada (or Hinayana) on the one hand, and the Mahayana on the other. In turn, each of these major schools itself split into two, divided by philosophical differences to be touched on below. The Theravadins are divided into the Vaibhasikas and the Sautrantikas, and the Mahayanists into the Madhyamikas and the Yogacarins. The ideas of these two latter schools have been of the first importance in the development of the Mahayana, and are used as reference points not only by Indian thinkers, but also many in Tibet, China and Japan. The greatest representative of the Madhyamika is Nagarjuna, and Vasubandhu is a leading figure of the Yogacara school.
Despite the existence of a fairly early biography of Vasubandhu by Paramartha (499– 569 CE) – a leading exponent of Yogacarin doctrine in China – there is very little agreement as to the facts of Vasubandhu’s life. According to Paramartha’s Biography of Master Vasubandhu (C: P’o-sou-p’an-tou fa-shih chuan), Vasubandhu was born in Purusapura (Peshawar), son of a Brahmin named Kausika and younger brother of Asanga, himself to become a major figure in the Yogacarin tradition. In his earlier years, Vasubandhu is said to have been a follower of the Theravadin Abhidharma,2 composing a major summary of doctrine, the Abhidharmakosa, in 600 verses, to be followed by a prose commentary, the Abhidharmakosabhasyam.3 This work, together with his skill as a disputant, is said to have brought Vasubandhu a considerable reputation.
It is said that Asanga, a Mahayanist, feared that his younger brother would use his considerable powers to attack the Mahayana. Feigning illness, Asanga persuaded Vasubandhu to return to him at Purusapura. In the course of the visit, Asanga converted Vasubandhu to the Mahayana, and the latter then turned his considerable intellectual gifts to its service. Together with commentaries on major Mahayana scriptures (e.g. on the Avatamsaka, Vimalakirti, Nirvana and Prajnaparamita sutras), Vasubandhu also wrote a number of what became key texts of the Yogacarin school, notably the Twenty Verses and their Commentary (Vimsatika-Karika Vrtti), the Thirty Verses (Trimsika- Karika) and The Teaching of the Three Ownbeings [or: Natures] (Tri-Svahbava-Nirdesa). Vasubandhu is said to have died in his eightieth year at Ayodhya.
Such is the outline of the biography given by Paramartha. Many scholars have been reluctant to accept this evidence, however, since other early sources give conflicting dates for Vasubandhu’s life by up to two hundred years, and in addition there are several figures in Buddhist history named Vasubandhu. In an attempt to accommodate all the evidence, the scholar Erich Frauwallner proposed that there were in fact two Vasubandhus whose lives and works have been confused, one responsible for the Abhidharmika works, and the other Asanga’s younger brother.4 Frauwallner’s thesis is accepted by some scholars and disputed by others, and it is unlikely that the issue can be settled unless new evidence comes to light. It is one of several profound disagreements in Vasubandhu studies.
One point which is beyond dispute is that the Yogacarin school of the Mahayana has accumulated more names than any other, being standardly referred to in no fewer than four ways. The terms used are worth noting, since they indicate some important features of this school of thought from which to begin. The terms are as follows:
Terms (2) and (4) are roughly equivalent, and indicate the central metaphysical doctrine of the school, idealistic monism, i.e. the view that reality is one and not many, and the one is mental in nature, not material.6 Term (3) indicates the principal way in which this metaphysical belief is argued for, namely by means of a philosophical analysis of perception.
The philosophy of perception had been for some time an area of dispute between the two major schools of Theravadins, among whom Vasubandhu received his intellectual training. The Vaibhasikas accepted what is termed a naive realist theory of perception, i.e. the view that what is given in perception is the external world, not a sensation caused by something in the external world. On this view, we do not in any way create the objects of which we are aware in perception, which are held to be entirely unaffected by the nature of our perceptual apparatus. Instead we simply discover the external world, as it is, via direct perception of it. By contrast, those belonging to the Sautrantika school, whilst accepting the existence of the external world, deny that it is directly experienced in perception.7 They hold a form of what is termed a representationalist theory of perception. Common to all forms of this view is the thesis that what is immediately experienced in perception is not an object but a mental entity or datum, from which the existence of an external object must be inferred.8 The belief in the existence of the external world, no longer itself immediately experienced, is justified as the most plausible hypothesis by means of which to account for the major features of perceptual experience, namely its coherence and its independence of our will.
Vasubandhu accepts the Sautrantika view that the immediately given in perception is something mental in nature, a sensation or sense-datum in western terminology. What he then argues is that there is no need to add the hypothesis that these sensations are caused by physical objects in an external world. All there is can be explained equally well in terms of mental events alone: hence the term cittamatra or mind-only as a name for this philosophy.9 He begins his argument for this conclusion by drawing attention to the fact that perception can malfunction. We can believe ourselves to be experiencing external objects but be deceived by a malfunction in our perceptual apparatus:
All this is perception-only, because of the appearance of non-existent objects, just as there may be the seeing of non-existent nets of hair by someone affected with an optical disorder.10
That is, in delusory perception something is perceived, but what is perceived is not an external stimulus, and must therefore be something mental in nature.
It may be objected that this argument can at best only establish that some and not all experiences have mental contents as their immediate data. Further, how can the coherence and involuntariness of perceptions be accounted for on the hypothesis that there is no external world to cause them? Somewhat as Descartes was to do again many centuries later when wishing to cast doubt on the trustworthiness of the senses, Vasubandhu now turns to the experience of dreaming:
In a dream, even without an [external] object of sense or understanding, only certain things are to be seen: bees, gardens, women, men, etc. and these only in certain places, and not everywhere. And even there in those places, they are there to be seen only sometimes, and not all the time.11
That is, in dreams, where there is agreed to be no external object, our mental contents exhibit coherence and involuntariness, and therefore coherence and involuntariness do not entail the existence of an external world.
This argument is by no means immune to criticism,12 though Vasubandhu would not have been unduly troubled, since he has another and quite different type of argument to support his mind-only thesis, and this is an argument based on the insights derived from nondual awareness:
when [people] become awakened by the attainment of a supermundane knowledge free from discriminations, which is the antidote to these [discriminations], then they truly understand the non-being of those sense objects through meeting with a clear worldly subsequently attained knowledge.13
‘Supermundane knowledge free from discriminations’ is the nondual awareness of enlightenment, direct non-conceptual awareness of being-as-is. Those who attain this level of insight have direct apprehension of the unreality of all individuals, and this Vasubandhu regards as incorrigible evidence in favour of the mind-only thesis. A ‘clear worldly subsequently attained knowledge’ is the state of mind of the enlightened after the enlightenment experience itself: a pure, non-clinging reflection, in which dualistic experiences are apprehended as they are, i.e. mere constructions, mental in nature.
The acceptance of monism in metaphysics generates an agenda of philosophical problems which monists must address. Just as those who accept materialistic monism (the view that what there is is matter-only) must give an account in materialistic terms of all the phenomena ordinarily called mental, so those who accept idealistic monism are faced with a corresponding set of difficulties. In the present case, Vasubandhu has to give an account of the ordinary distinction between veridical and non-veridical perception, and of the major features of our experience – How does it come about that it is ordinarily dualistic? How do causal sequences operate over time? – in ways which do not presuppose the existence either of matter or an external world. Vasubandhu sets out to do precisely this, within the context of a buddhistic framework whose ultimate goal is a practical one, the attainment of nirvana, the release from suffering.
The distinction between veridical and non-veridical perception is a difficult issue for idealistic monists. In the framework of a pluralistic metaphysics which accepts (roughly) the common-sense picture of the world as composed of variously related discrete individuals in space and time, this distinction can be fairy easily accommodated, in principle at least: veridical perceptions accurately reflect the way things are in the external world, and non-veridical ones do not. Vasubandhu has dispensed with the external word, however, and so cannot have recourse to this idea of correspondence or lack of it between perception and what is perceived. Instead, he recasts the distinction in terms of the mutual coherence or incoherence of perceptions: ‘The certainty of perceptions takes place mutually, by the state of their sovereign effect on one another.’14 In other words, since ordinary experience is simply a sequence of mental events, all change is change within this sequence. What we ordinarily regard as veridical perceptions are those which cohere with the rest of the sequence. We regard as non-veridical those which are incoherent with this sequence. This way of recasting the distinction is a fairly standard move in metaphysics of the kind under discussion.15
Next, Vasubandhu has to accommodate within his mind-only metaphysics both the major features of our mental life and the buddhistic view that our ordinary mental life is delusory and can be abrogated. The major features of our ordinary mental life which are of most pressing concern to Vasubandhu are:
In order to account for the dualistic nature of our ordinary world-picture, and to accommodate the buddhistic notion of enlightenment, Vasubandhu introduces the doctrine of the three own-beings or natures.
According to this doctrine, all the elements of consciousness can be divided into three classes, which Vasubandhu calls the interdependent own-being (S: paratantra-svabhava); the constructed (or imagined) own-being (S: parikalpitasvabhava); and the fulfilled (or perfected) own-being (S: parinispanna-svabhava). The interdependent own-being is the play of the phenomenal word, the stream of experience. All conceptual discriminations within this stream of experience are the result of the activity of the imagination (parikalpa), which thus fabricates or constructs the common-sense (and delusory) world-picture, i.e. the constructed own-being. Against the views of the Madhyamikas, the Yogacarins consider that it is incoherent to suppose that such fabrication is possible except on the hypothesis of a substratum: hence their insistence that there are three basic classes of elements of consciousness rather than two. The fulfilled own-being is the absence of discrimination, i.e. enlightenment or the condition of a Buddha.
Vasubandhu describes the relations between the three own-beings in the following way:
At first, the interdependent, which consists of the non-being of duality, is entered;
then and there construction only, non-existent duality, is entered;
then and there the fulfilled, the non-being of duality, is entered.16
This ordering is partly logical and partly psychological. The construction of the dualistic world-picture, as has been indicated, in Vasubandhu’s view presupposes something out of which to construct it: thus the interdependent own-being is logically prior to the constructed. Psychologically, the attainment of nondual awareness or fulfilled own-being is posterior to the ordinary awareness of constructed own-being. Logically, however, the fulfilled own-being is prior to everything else, being reality and so the ground of all events:
Through the non-apprehension of duality,
There is apprehension of the Ground of events.17
(Strictly speaking, the fulfilled own-being cannot be an own-being at all, as Vasubandhu sometimes notes. Since it is Suchness or being-as-is, no predicates apply to it, and so it can have no own-being or nature. When he speaks in this way, Vasubandhu’s views come close to those of Nagarjuna.)18
The next stage in Vasubandhu’s account of the major features of experience involves one of the most characteristic and influential Yogacarin doctrines, the analysis of the eight types of consciousness. Within the context of idealistic monism, Vasubandhu has to explain in detail why it is that the phenomenal world appears to us to be ordered in causal sequences which operate independently of our volitions. This is an especially high priority for a Buddhist, since to do this is to explain how the law of karma can operate without reference to a world of material individuals to be the vehicles of causal interactions. The law of karma states that our past and present actions, good or bad, generate consequences of a like kind which will unfailingly be visited upon us at some time in the future. How is this possible within a purely mental universe?
Vasubandhu’s answer to this difficulty is the theory of the store-consciousness (alayavijnana), the first of the eight types of consciousness discriminated in Yogacarin thought. The store-consciousness is an ever-changing stream of mental events which underlies samsaric experience. It is held that all actions leave what the Yogacarins metaphorically term seeds (S: bija) and these are deposited, so to speak, in the storeconsciousness. They mature, i.e. return to consciousness, when required to do so by the law of karma. In this way, momentary mental events (which is what our actions really are), can have consequences which do not appear to consciousness until well after the event in question, independently of our conscious will:
The residual impressions of actions, along with the residual impressions of a ‘dual’ apprehension, cause another maturation (of seeds) to occur, where the former maturation has been exhausted.19
The store-consciousness is subliminal or on the borderline of ordinary awareness, yet it has experiences, including volitions: Vasubandhu must claim this, in order to provide a motivating force for change:
Its appropriations, states, and perceptions are not fully conscious, Yet it is always endowed with contacts, mental attentions, feelings, cognitions, and volitions.20
It is important to note that the storeconsciousness is not the ultimate reality in Yogacarin thought. Indeed, the goal of Yogacarin training is to bring its operation to a halt, at which point it ceases. It ceases when no more seeds are deposited and so when no more karma are generated, i.e. when the condition of the bodhisattva (i.e. sainthood) or of a Buddha is attained.21
The store-consciousness forms the basis for the seven other types of consciousness identified by Vasubandhu: one type of consciousness is associated with each of the five senses, and an accompanying sixth type, manovijnana, is the aspect of consciousness which synthesizes the impressions of the senses and the data of introspection. The seventh type of consciousness is ‘tainted mind’ (S: klistamanas), a type of consciousness which takes the storeconsciousness for its object, and mistakenly regards the latter as the true, real self. Tainted mind involves our ordinary, mistaken sense of self-consciousness, and is the source of suffering: ‘It is always conjoined with four afflictions. . . . known as view of self, confusion of self, pride of self, and love of self.’22 Since the illusion of ordinary self-consciousness is removed by enlightenment, tainted mind, like the storeconsciousness, ceases when nondual awareness is attained.23
It may seem paradoxical that, in a philosophy whose goal is the attainment of a state of awareness in which all discriminations are abrogated, Vasubandhu should spend so long, and with such evident relish, elaborating a complex idealism embodying many fine distinctions. Vasubandhu was aware of the seeming paradox, and has a consistent response to it. In one sense, the entire Yogacarin system is a therapy: its analyses are designed ultimately to free the mind from the grip of delusory conceptual thought. It is a ladder which is to be thrown away once the higher levels of awareness have been reached. Vasubandhu is careful to point out that knowledge of the Yogacarin system itself does not constitute enlightenment. To entertain the belief, ‘“All this is perception only” . . . involves an apprehension’,24 i.e. conceptual discriminations, and so is not enlightenment. The latter is nondual awareness, in which ‘consciousness does not apprehend any object of consciousness’:25
It is the inconceivable, beneficial constant Ground, not liable to affliction, bliss, and the liberation-body called the Dharma-body of the Sage.26
The ultimate purpose of this elaborate and influential philosophy is to bring about a state in which all philosophizing comes to an end.
1 S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, 2 vols, Vol. I, London, Allen & Unwin, 1966, pp. 468–469.
2 The Abhidharma (P: Abhidhamma) is the section of the Theravadin Tipitaka which deals with matters of psychological and to some extent philosophical interest. A follower of the Abhidharma is referred to as an abhidharmika. To be absolutely precise, Vasubandhu’s Adhidharmakosa is a summary exposition of the Mahavibhasa, itself a commentary on the Abhidharma treatises.
3 This major work is now available in English, trans. L. Poussin and L.M. Pruden, 4 vols, Berkeley, CA, Asian Humanities Press, 1988.
4 See E. Frauwallner, On the Date of the Buddhist Master of the Law Vasubandhu, Rome, Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1951. For a contrary view, see S. Anacker, Seven Works of Vasubandhu, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1984, pp. 7–28.
5 cf. Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations, London, Routledge, 1989, p. 83.
6 Even at so basic a level, the interpretation of Vasubandhu’s thought is disputed. Kochumuttom in A Buddhist Doctrine of Experience, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1982, argues that Vasubandhu embraces pluralistic realism, and is much closer to the abhidharmikas than is generally realized. Radhakrishnan, op.cit., pp. 624– 643, accepts the idealist monist interpretation. For a detailed survey of the whole issue, see T.E. Wood, Mind Only, Honolulu, Hawaii University Press, 1991. In my view, the idealist monist view makes more sense of the arguments put forward in Vasubandhu’s later works than any other, though the influence of abhidharmika views is marked in some other works. It is by no means difficult to construe all the works attributed to Vasubandhu as those of one thinker who began as an abhidharmika, was converted to the Yogacara, but by no means abandoned all his former ideas. Thus in certain of his works Vasubandhu adopts the key Yogacarin doctrine of the store-consciousness – a term explained later in the present essay – but combines it with an abhidharmika metaphysics in which the ultimate realities are moment-events (cf. e.g. A Discussion of the Five Aggregates/ Pancaskandhaka-Prakarana, in Anacker, op. cit., pp. 51 ff.). In this theory, the store-consciousness is said to be only momentary in duration, replaced in the next moment by a further momentary storeconsciousness, and so on. It is a question of some interest, though too big to be pursued here, whether this doctrine of moment-events, a direct consequence of the Buddha’s doctrine of aggregates (skandhas), is easily compatible with the nondualism of the Mahayana, in which ultimate reality is neither momentary nor an event. The present exposition of Vasubandhu’s philosophy is based on late works which are manifestly Yogacarin.
7 The term Vaibhasika is used because this group of Theravadins accept as their key scriptural text the Vibhasa, a commentary on the Abhidharma. The origin of the term Sautrantika is disputed: it perhaps indicates that this group chose as their scriptural authority the Suttapitaka, adjuring the other two sections of the Tipitaka: cf. Radhakrishnan, op.cit., p. 619, n. 2. Both Vaibhasikas and Sautrantikas are standardly classified as adherents of the Sarvastivada. A Sarvastivadin is one who accepts the metaphysics of pluralistic realism, i.e. the view that reality is composed of a number of discrete, independent substances.
8 In western versions of representationalist theories of perception, the immediate data of senseexperience have been referred to in a number of ways: ‘ideas’ (Locke); ‘impressions’ (Hume); or ‘sensa’ or ‘sense-data’ in more recent variants of this same view.
9 Vasubandhu’s development of the Sautrantika viewpoint was to be parallelled very closely some 1,300 years later in the West in Berkeley’s reaction to Locke’s philosophy; cf. the articles on these philosophers in D. Collinson, Fifty Major Philosophers, London, Routledge, 1988.
10 Twenty Verses, Anacker, op. cit., p. 161.
11 Twenty Verses, Anacker, op. cit., p. 162. cf. Descartes, 1st Meditation.
12 e.g. some centuries later the Vedantin Sankara objected to Yogacarin dream arguments: ‘the things of which we are conscious in a dream are negated by our waking consciousness . . . Those things, on the other hand, of which we are conscious in our waking state, such as posts and the like, are never negated in any state’ (Sankara, Commentary on the Vedanta Sutras, II.2.29, in S. Radhakrishnan and C.A. Moore (eds), A Source Book in Indian Philosophy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1957, p. 534). Sankara argues that we regard dreamexperiences as non-continuous and incoherent with waking experiences, and so no conclusions can safely be drawn about the latter on the analogy of the VASUBANDHU 64 former. Sankara is following Badarayana’s criticisms of analogous dream-arguments, cf. Brahma Sutra, II.2.29 and III.2.3.
13 Twenty Verses, Anacker, op. cit., p. 173.
14 op.cit., p. 172.
15 It has a close parallel in the coherence theory of truth, adopted by western philosophers like Hegel who also adopt idealistic monism.
16 The Teaching of the Three Own Beings, Anacker, op. cit., p. 294.
17 op.cit., p. 295. In the two-truth theory of the Madhyamikas, the constructed and interdependent own-beings are reduced to one (S: samvrti satya); the fulfilled own-being is retained, being called paramartha satya (profound, ultimate, or absolute reality). Cf. Nagarjuna.
18 e.g. Thirty Verses, vs 24, Anacker, op. cit., p. 188.
19 op.cit., vs 19. The Thirty Verses became the most widely read and commented on of all Yogacarin treatises.
20 op.cit., vs 3, p. 186.
21 Hence Vasubandhu writes of the storeconsciousness, ‘Its de-volvement [i.e. cessation] takes place in a saintly state’ (op.cit., vs 5). Some commentators have wrongly taken the storeconsciousness to be the ultimate reality in Yogacarin thought, cf. J.D. Willis, On Knowing Reality, New York, Columbia University Press, 1979, pp. 23ff.
22 Thirty Verses, vs 6, Anacker, op. cit., p. 186.
23 op.cit., vs 7. The eightfold analysis of consciousness proved influential in the later development of Mahayana Buddhism. It was accepted, for example, by many Zen thinkers, cf. Hakuin, and by many Tibetan thinkers, cf. Padma-Sambhava and Milarepa.
24 op.cit., vs 27, p. 189.
25 op.cit., vs 28.
26 op.cit., vs 30.
The major Yogacarin works of Vasubandhu are:
Madhyanta-Vibhaga-Bhasya (Commentary on the Separation of the Middle from Extremes)
Trimsika-Karika (The Thirty Verses)
Tri-Svabhava-Nirdesa (The Teaching of the Three Own-beings)
Vimsatika-Karika Vrtti (The Twenty Verses and their Commentary)
the Buddha, Badarayana, Nagarjuna, Padma- Sambhava, Milarepa, Hakuin
Anacker, S., Seven Works of Vasubandhu, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1984 (contains the major Yogacarin works with extensive notes and introductory matter)
Frauwallner, E., On the Date of the Buddhist Master of the Law Vasubandhu, Rome, Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1951 (sets out the arguments for the ‘two Vasubandhus’ theory)
Kochumuttom, T.A., A Buddhist Doctrine of Experience, Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1982
Radhakrishnan, S., Indian Philosophy, 2 vols, Vol. I, London, Allen & Unwin, 8th impression, 1966 Radhakrishnan, S. and Moore, C.A., A Source Book in Indian Philosophy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1957 (contains a further translation of the Twenty Verses and their Commentary and the Thirty Verses)
Vasubandhu, Abhidharmakosabhasyam, trans. L. Poussin and L.M. Pruden, 4 vols, Berkeley, CA, Asian Humanities Press, 1988
Vasubandhu, Karmasiddhiprakarana (Treatise on Action), trans. E. Lamotte and L.M. Pruden, Berkeley, CA, Asian Humanities Press, 1988 (there is another translation of this work in Anacker, op. cit., 1984)
Williams, P., Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations, London, Routledge, 1989
Willis, J.D., On Knowing Reality, New York,Columbia University Press, 1979 (a translation of a key section of the major Yogacarin work of Vasubandhu’s brother Asanga)
Wood, T.E., Mind Only, Honolulu, Hawaii University Press, 1991