Yogācāra

Yogācāra is a Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophical tradition that analyzes consciousness, perception, and the construction of experience. It is especially known for the idea that experience is shaped by consciousness rather than encountered as an independently given world.

Eight Consciousnesses: A Yogācāra model distinguishing five sensory consciousnesses, mental consciousness, self-consciousness, and storehouse consciousness. This layered model supplies Yogācāra’s most detailed map of cognition.
Subject–Object Duality: The apparent division between a perceiving subject and an independently perceived object. Yogācāra treats this division as a construction within experience, not its ultimate structure.
Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra: A Mahāyāna sūtra that presents teachings on consciousness, the three natures, and the interpretation of Buddhist doctrine. It is among the earliest major scriptural sources associated with Yogācāra.
Madhyamaka: A Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophical tradition that analyzes emptiness and rejects intrinsic existence. Its approach to emptiness differs from Yogācāra’s characteristic analysis of consciousness.
Chinese Faxiang: A Chinese Buddhist school that systematized Yogācāra teachings through translations and commentaries. Faxiang became a major East Asian institutional and scholastic form of Yogācāra.
Storehouse Consciousness: The ālaya-vijñāna, a foundational consciousness that preserves karmic seeds and supports continuing experience. It explains how habits and karmic potentials persist beneath ordinary awareness.
Vijñapti-mātra: The Sanskrit expression often translated as “representation-only” or “cognition-only” in Yogācāra texts. Its interpretation frames the question of whether Yogācāra denies external objects.
Asaṅga: An influential Indian Buddhist philosopher traditionally associated with founding Yogācāra and systematizing its teachings. His works helped give the tradition a comprehensive philosophical form.
Sautrāntika: An early Buddhist school whose theories of perception and inference became important in later Buddhist debates. Sautrāntika arguments supplied rivals and resources in Yogācāra accounts of cognition.
Japanese Hossō: A Japanese Buddhist school descended from Chinese Faxiang and grounded in Yogācāra doctrine. Hossō carried Yogācāra scholastic traditions into Japan.

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