What is and isn't Yogacara
Dan Lusthaus
Yogagara is one of the two schools of Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism. Its founding is ascribed to two half brothers, Asanga and Vasubandhu, but its basic tenets and doctrines were already in circulation for at least a century before the brothers lived. Yogacara;ra focused on the processes involved in cognition in order to overcome the ignorance that prevents one from attaining liberation from the karmic rounds of birth and death. Yogacara;rins' sustained attention to issues such as cognition, consciousness, perception, and epistemology, coupled with claims such as "external objects do not exist," has led some to misinterpret Yogacara;ra as a form of metaphysical idealism. They did not focus on consciousness to assert it as ultimately real (Yogacara;ra claims consciousness is only conventionally real since it arises from moment to moment due to fluctuating causes and conditions), but rather because it is the cause of the karmic problem they are seeking to eliminate.
Yogacara;ra introduced several important new doctrines to Buddhism, including vijñapti-mātra (nothing but cognition), three self-natures, three turnings of the Dharma-wheel, and a system of eight consciousness (all explained below). Their close scrutiny of cognition spawned two important developments: an elaborate psychological therapeutic system that mapped out the problems in cognition along with the antidotes to correct them, and an earnest epistemological endeavor that led to some of the most sophisticated work on perception and logic ever engaged in by Buddhists or Indians.
1 Historical Overview
Though the founding of Yogacara;ra is traditionally ascribed to two half-brothers, Asanga and Vasubandhu (fourth-fifth century C.E.), most of its fundamental doctrines had already appeared in a number of scriptures a century or more earlier, most notably the Saddhinirmocana Sutra (Elucidating the Hidden Connections). Among the key Yogacara;ra concepts introduced in the Sadhinirmocana Sutra are the notions of "only-cognition" (vijñapti-mātra), three self-natures (trisvabhāva), the ālaya-vijñāna (warehouse consciousness), overturning the basis (āśraya-parāvṛtti), and the theory of eight consciousnesses.
The Sadhinirmocana Sutra proclaimed its teachings to be the third turning of the wheel of Dharma. Buddha lived ca. the fifth century BCE, but Mahayana Sutras did not begin to appear until roughly five hundred years later. New Mahāyāna Sūtras continued to be composed for many centuries. Indian Mahayanists treated these Sutras as documents that recorded actual discourses of the Buddha. By the third or fourth century CE a wide and sometimes incommensurate range of Buddhist doctrines had emerged, but whichever doctrines appeared in Sūtras could be ascribed to the authority of Buddha himself.
According to the earliest Pali Suttas, when Buddha became enlightened he turned the wheel of Dharma, i.e., he began to teach the path to enlightenment, the Dharma (Pali: Dhamma). While Buddhists had always maintained that Buddha had geared specific teachings to the specific capacities of specific audiences, the Sadhinirmocana Sutra established the idea that Buddha had taught significantly different doctrines to different audiences based on their levels of understanding; and that these different doctrines led from provisional antidotes (pratipakṣa) for certain wrong views up to a comprehensive teaching that finally made explicit what was only implicit in the earlier teachings. In its view, the first two turnings of the wheel-the teachings of the Four Noble Truths in Nikāya and Abhidharma Buddhism, and the teachings of the Madhyamaka school, respectively-had expressed the Dharma through incomplete formulations that required further elucidation (neyārtha) in order to be properly understood and thus effective. The first turning, by emphasizing entities (dharmas, aggregates, etc.) while "hiding" emptiness, might lead one to hold a substantialistic view; the second turning, by emphasizing negation while "hiding" the positive qualities of the Dharma, might be misconstrued as nihilism. The third turning was a middle way between these extremes that finally made everything explicit (nītārtha). In order to leave nothing hidden, the Yogacara;rins embarked on a massive, systematic synthesis of all the Buddhist teachings that had preceded them, scrutinizing and evaluating them down to the most trivial details in an attempt to formulate the definitive (nitārtha) Buddhist teaching. Stated another way, to be effective all of Buddhism required a Yogacara;rin reinterpretation. Innovations in abhidharma analysis, logic, cosmology, meditation methods, psychology, philosophy, and ethics are among their most important contributions.
Asanga's magnum opus, the Yogacararabhumi-Sutra (Treatise on the Stages of Yoga Practice), is a comprehensive encyclopedia of Buddhist terms and models (which draws heavily on the Agamas - the Sanskrit counterpart of the Pali Nikayas), mapped out according to his Yogacara;rin view of how one progresses along the stages of the path to enlightenment. Vasubandhu's pre-Yogacara;rin magnum opus, the Abhidharmakosa (Treasury of Abhidharma) also provides a comprehensive, detailed overview of the Buddhist path with meticuluous attention to nuances and differences of opinion on a broad range of exacting topics.
Though both half brothers were born Brahmins, Asanga is believed to have early on joined the Mahīśasikas, a non-Mahāyāna school of Buddhism deeply steeped in the Āgamas. Asanga and Vasubandhu became the first identifiable Yogacara;rins, each having initially been devoted to other schools of Buddhism. Both were prolific authors, though Asanga attributed a portion of his writings to Maitreya, the Future Buddha living in Tusheeeta Heaven. Some modern scholars have argued that this Maitreya was an actual human teacher, not the Future Buddha, but the tradition is fairly clear. After twelve years of fruitless meditation alone in a cave (or forest, according to other versions), during a moment of utter despair when Asanga was ready to quit due to his abject failure, Maitreya appeared to him and transported him to Tusheeeta Heaven where he instructed him in previously unknown texts, Yogacara;rin works, that Asanga then introduced to his fellow Buddhists. Precisely which texts these are is less clear, since the Chinese and Tibetan traditions assign different works to Maitreya.
http://www.hm.tyg.jp/~acmuller/yogacara/articles/intro-uni.htm