Encyclopedia of Buddhism Volume One A -L Robert E. Buswell

Y OGA CA RA
S CHOOL
excrement in radically different ways demonstrates
that what each perceives is a projection based on its
own conditioning, or its own mental “seeds” (bljas) acquired
from past experiences (perhaps in past lives).
KARMA (ACTION) is collective, in that we gravitate toward
beings or types who perceive as we do, erroneously
justifying the seeming universality of our
group perspective. Thus the “varying perception” argument
supports rather than undermines the Yogacara
position. Vasubandhu uses the example of a wet
dream to demonstrate causal efficacy: Though the
erotic cognitive object is a mental construction, without
external or physical reality, it causes actual seminal
emission, a physical effect produced outside the
dream and recognized as such upon awakening. This
means that even though dreams are only fantasies,
they have real karmic consequences. The deluded
mind produces real effects that can only be known after
awakening, once delusion has ceased. Awakening
means enlightenment—BODHI (AWAKENING) can also
mean enlightenment—the cessation of the deluded
mind. Even though we act in a collective deluded
world of our own construction, our actions have real
causal consequences.
To the objection that dream objects are usually not
as stable as objects perceived while awake, Vasubandhu
replies that objects and events seem less clear, less consistent
in dreams than when awake because during
sleep the mind is overcome by sleepiness and, thus, it
is not “thinking clearly.” Therefore, in a dream one
does not know that the objects therein are only dreamobjects
until one awakens. Similarly, to the question of
whether we can know other minds, Vasubandhu replies
that even our own minds are opaque to us, since our
mental capacities are dim and sleepy. An awakened one
(the literal meaning of buddha), however, can know
other minds more clearly than we know our own. So,
not only can we know other minds (if we awaken), but
we constantly influence each other for better and for
worse (though we may not notice that within our
individual dreams). Thus, karma is intersubjective.
Moreover, since the more awake one is, the more
causally effective one’s mind becomes, sages and buddhas
can exert powerful effects on the world, including
devastating destruction, and even life and death.
Vijñaptimatra
Yogacara encapsulates its doctrine in the term
vijñaptimatra (often rendered “consciousness-only” or
“representation-only”), which is not meant to suggest
that only the mind is real. Consciousness (vijñana) is
not the ultimate reality or solution for Yogacara, but
rather the basic problem, as Vasubandhu’s Twenty
Verses illustrated. Vijñapti is grammatically a causative
form, “what makes known,” and thus indicates that
what appears in cognition is constructed, projected by
consciousness, rather than passively received from
outside by consciousness. Since nothing appears to
us except within our acts of consciousness, all is
vijñaptimatra. The inability to distinguish between our
interpretations of the world and the world itself is what
Yogacara calls vijñaptimatra. This problem pervades
ordinary mental operations and can be eliminated only
when those operations are brought to an end.
It is not that there is nothing real outside an individual
mind. Yogacara rejects solipsism and theories
of a universal mind that subsumes individuals. According
to Yogacara, each individual is a distinct consciousness
stream or mental continuum (cittasantana),
and individuals can communicate with each other,
teach and learn from each other, and influence and affect
each other. If this were not the case, learning about
Buddhism would be impossible. Even ru pa (sensorial
materiality) is accepted, if one realizes that physicality
is only known as such through sensation and cognition.
Everything we know, conceive, imagine, or are
aware of, we know through cognition, including the
notion that entities might exist independent of our
cognition. Although the mind does not create the
physical world, it generates the interpretative categories
through which we know and classify the physical
world, and it does this so seamlessly that we mistake
our interpretations for the world itself. Those interpretations,
which are projections of our desires and
anxieties, become obstructions (avarana) preventing
us from seeing what is actually the case. In simple
terms, we are blinded by our own self-interests, our
own prejudices, our desires. Unenlightened cognition
is an appropriative act. Yogacara does not speak about
subjects and objects; instead, it analyzes perception in
terms of graspers (grahaka) and what is grasped
(grahya).
The Buddhist notion of karma is intimately connected
to the notion of appropriation (upadana). As
the earliest Buddhist texts explained, suffering and ignorance
are produced by karma. Karma, according to
Buddhism, consists of any intentional activity of body,
speech, or mind. Intention is the crucial factor, and intention
is a cognitive condition, so whatever is devoid
of cognition must be nonkarmic and nonintentional.
Thus, by definition, whatever is noncognitive can have
no karmic implications or consequences. Intention
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