Chapter One: The Formation of the School—From Yoga Practitioners to Theorists¶

What this chapter must do. Set out three things before examining doctrine: the school’s origins, its literary holdings, and its own account of its position in Buddhist philosophy. The first matters most, because the machinery this essay will examine rests on a systematization of contemplative experience, rather than a speculative assembly made in the study.

Two names, two ways of understanding itself. The school has two names, each with a different job.

Yogācāra takes its name from contemplative practice. Its encyclopedia, the Treatise on the Stages of Yoga Practitioners, opens with a question and answer: ‘What are the stages of yoga practitioners? They are seventeen stages.’ The treatise lists all seventeen: the stage associated with the five groups of sensory consciousness; the stage of mind; the stage with initial and sustained application; the stage without initial but with sustained application; the stage without either; the stage of meditative collectedness; the stage without meditative collectedness; the stage with consciousness; the stage without consciousness; the stage accomplished through hearing; the stage accomplished through reflection; the stage accomplished through cultivation; the stage of the hearer; the stage of the solitary buddha; the stage of the bodhisattva; the stage with a remainder of the basis; and the stage without a remainder of the basis.¹

The ordering of the seventeen stages is itself an account of the school and deserves separate attention. The first nine are arranged by states of mind: from the five sensory consciousnesses and mind, through the presence or absence of initial and sustained application, to whether one is in meditative absorption and whether consciousness is present. The middle three follow the sequence of hearing, reflection, and cultivation. The last five follow vehicles and bases. An encyclopedia’s table of contents is itself a worldview. This school understands a ‘stage’ as the situation in which a yoga practitioner finds themself; it does not arrange its material by doctrinal divisions. The theory of cognitive processes in Essay Fourteen and the seventy-five dharmas in Essay Fifteen both classify dharmas. Here the classification concerns where the practitioner stands. This is the source of the name: the stages of yoga practitioners, hence Yogācāra.

Consciousness-only takes its name from its thesis. ‘The three realms are consciousness-only’ is the banner it raises in arguments with others. One name records its origins, the other its claim: the origins lie in the meditation hall; the claim enters the lecture hall. This order is worth remembering at the outset.

Three generations of lineage, and the handling of two old cases. Maitreya, Asaṅga, Vasubandhu. The traditional account has Asaṅga ascend to Tuṣita, receive the teaching directly from Maitreya, and return with five treatises. Modern scholars generally read the story historically, either positing a historical person named Maitreyanātha or attributing the composition and compilation of the five treatises to Asaṅga’s direction. Chapter One of Essay Six in Part I has presented both accounts and this book’s position in detail; they will not be repeated here.

Vasubandhu has another old case attached to him. In nineteen fifty-one, Frauwallner proposed two Vasubandhus: the author of the consciousness-only works and the author of the Treasury of Abhidharma were, he argued, two people with the same name. The guide to Essay Seventeen gave only the conclusion and its reasons. This essay follows the same practice.

The two old cases make little difference to this essay’s question; this must be explicit. What we examine is the mechanisms and clauses in the texts, not their authors’ identities. The three exclusion clauses among the six qualities of seeds, the three self-limitations in the Twenty Verses, and the wording that stops the regress in the four-aspect theory remain unchanged, word for word, however authorship is decided. Whether a mechanism can accept the status of a designation is judged by the definitions it sets down, regardless of who wrote them. That also explains why this essay need not settle the two old cases.

One fact of lineage does bear directly on our question and needs to be noted: Vasubandhu moved from the Treasury into the Mahāyāna. The verdict in the last chapter of Essay Seventeen was that the Treasury of Abhidharma marks both the close of sectarian philosophy and the threshold of Mahāyāna philosophy. The same book has two identities that have not merged even on its last page. In the Treasury, Vasubandhu takes seeds as far as a transformation of the body that supports them. One step further would require a deeper foundation for the continuum, and he does not take that step there. This essay lies on the other side of the threshold; Chapter Three takes up precisely that next step.

A map of six texts. All the source texts used in this essay are in Chinese. Xuanzang’s translation workshop rendered almost the school’s entire holdings into Chinese.

Two other texts are used where needed: the Discrimination between the Middle and the Extremes (T1600) supplies Chapter Two’s emptiness verse, and Paramārtha’s earlier translation of the Compendium of the Mahāyāna (T1593) provides a comparison between the old and new translations.

One thing emerges from this table: the six texts span an enormous range of genres. Sūtra, encyclopedia, outline, defense, root verses, and commentary each occupy a row, and all six are fully available in Chinese. This is the precise opposite of Essay Nineteen’s situation. Its guide recorded an asymmetry of sources: Buddhapālita lacks a premodern Chinese translation; half of Candrakīrti’s principal works are missing. Of the works discussed in Essay 19, the first of Kamalaśīla's three Bhāvanākrama texts has a Song-dynasty Chinese translation; Śāntarakṣita's Madhyamakālaṃkāra and the other two Bhāvanākrama texts have no old Chinese translations. Here the difficulty is too much material, rather than too little. A brief treatment must therefore take responsibility for selection, guided by the connections: include what answers an earlier essay’s question or supplies a later essay’s needs, and list the rest for future treatment.

The format of the Establishment of Consciousness-Only requires its own note and establishes a general rule for quotation. This book uses a procedure rare in the history of Chinese translation: Xuanzang combined ten commentaries into a single work, attributed to Dharmapāla and others. There are two consequences.

First, the text does not identify who stands behind the words ‘one view holds.’ The four-aspect theory in Chapter Four is a specimen. Three successive accounts of two, three, and four aspects are presented side by side using ‘one view holds’ and two forms of ‘those who,’ without naming anyone throughout. Only later did Chinese Buddhist commentaries assign the one-, two-, three-, and four-aspect positions to Sthiramati, Nanda, Dignāga, and Dharmapāla.

Second, whenever this book quotes the Establishment of Consciousness-Only and several ‘one view holds’ accounts appear together, it takes only the branch adopted by the text’s author and notes the other positions as alternatives. Names supplied by later commentaries are handled under the chronological restriction set out in Chapter Three of Essay Six in Part I: they are identified as classificatory language of the East Asian commentarial tradition, not as the Indian theorists’ own labels. This chapter establishes the rule; the subsequent chapters follow it.

The three-period classification of the teachings: the school’s account of its own position. In fascicle two of the Sūtra Unraveling the Deep Intent, the chapter on the characteristics of the absence of own-nature puts the complete account of the three periods into the mouth of the bodhisattva Paramārthasamudgata. The three passages follow.

In the first period, ‘at the Sages’ Descent in Vārāṇasī, in the Deer Park, solely for those setting out on the hearers’ vehicle, you turned the wheel of the true Dharma in the form of the four truths.’ The assessment is: ‘It could be surpassed and left room; its meaning was not definitive, and it provided a foothold for disputes.’

In the second period, ‘solely for those setting out to practice the Mahāyāna, on the basis that all dharmas lack own-nature, are unarisen, unceased, originally quiescent, and by their own nature in nirvāṇa, you turned the wheel of the true Dharma in a concealed form.’ The assessment is: ‘It too could be surpassed and left room; its meaning was still not definitive, and it provided a foothold for disputes.’

In the third period, ‘for all those setting out on any vehicle, on the basis that all dharmas lack own-nature, are unarisen, unceased, originally quiescent, and by their own nature in nirvāṇa, and of the absence of own-nature, you turned the wheel of the true Dharma in an explicit form.’ The assessment is: ‘It cannot be surpassed and leaves no room; its meaning is truly definitive, and it provides no foothold for disputes.’²

In the first-period row of Figure 1-1, the right-hand label should read 以四谛相转, “turning in the form of the four truths.” The 相 after the boxed 四谛相 is duplicated.

Three readings.

First, the distinction between the three periods concerns form, not content. The series on which the second and third periods rest is exactly the same: all dharmas lack own-nature, are unarisen, unceased, originally quiescent, and by their own nature in nirvāṇa. The third adds only the term ‘absence of own-nature’; the wheel is turned in a concealed form in one case and an explicit form in the other. This needs to be seen precisely. The three-period classification does not say that the teaching of emptiness was wrong, but that it was insufficiently explicit. The school understands itself as supplying that teaching with a way of speaking: the claim of no own-nature must be distinguished according to the three natures before its hidden intent becomes explicit.

Second, the criterion of definitive meaning is whether a teaching provides ‘a foothold for disputes.’ To judge definitiveness by whether a teaching leaves disputes a place to stand is to use a pragmatic criterion, not a criterion of truth value. The first and second periods are judged not definitive because they admit disputes; the third is judged truly definitive because it cannot be surpassed and leaves no room. The character of this criterion deserves attention. Chapter Six of Essay Nineteen encountered the same form when examining readings of the two truths: coordinates for instruction and coordinates for logic are two different systems, and mixing them causes trouble.

Third, whether this self-understanding holds up is precisely the issue in the dispute over emptiness and existence, to be heard in Chapter Seven. Half the actual situation there can be disclosed now. Bhāviveka replies to this attempted incorporation: ‘I am not so; how could I mistakenly affirm the Yogācāra theorists’ position?’ The other side rejects incorporation on the spot. Competing classifications of each other’s teachings carry routes of instruction; their logical content must be assessed separately. Chapter Six of Essay Nineteen established this ruling; Chapters Seven and Eight here retain it.

Statement of approach. This essay follows a doctrinal framework, not a chronology of the literature; each chapter identifies its root sources. All chapters hold to one question: can this machinery accept the status of a designation? The measuring instruments are the theorem and clauses of Essay Eighteen, identified as each chapter uses them. The Compendium school arising from the differences between the old and new translations, and the Faxiang school of Xuanzang and Kuiji, are both Chinese sequels to this essay’s story. Chapter Eight marks the routes without beginning their accounts.

References¶