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.g., the ViTZatikA and TriTZikA, see Skilling 2000.For a sug-gestion that the Mahayanist Vasubandhu not only wrote the AbhidharmakoZa (1970 3),but may have already owed allegiance to Yogacara at the time of writing, see Kritzer1993.We simply lack the information at the moment to settle conclusively the issue ofone or multiple Vasubandhus.7.For detailed summaries of these texts, and many others, see Potter 1999.Subsequentvolumes of this valuable series summarize inter alia further Madhyamika and Yogacaraphilosophical works.8.Indeed, it is arguable that in India forms of Yogacara, once it had emerged, almost alwayswere the dominant Mahayana philosophical position.But note that it is not alwayspossible to pigeon-hole Indian Buddhist treatises neatly into either Madhyamika orYogacara as classically and paradigmatically understood.Interest in exclusive doctrinalschool identity may have been less widespread in India (particularly, perhaps, amongthose Mahayanists whose primary interest was in facilitating their meditation experi-ence in terms of the Bodhisattva path) than is sometimes assumed.We shall meet thesame issue again in the following chapter, where questions of  Madhyamika or Yogacaraschool identity for the tathAgatagarbha tradition, at least in its origins, may be unhelpful.9.The study of these important epistemologists is complex and philosophically demand-ing.As far as the treatment of Mahayana as such, and Yogacara in particular, for ourpurposes here it would not add very much to the others considered in this chapter.I shall therefore pass over Dignaga and Dharmakcrti in all but silence.For furtherstudy of Dharmakcrti one could begin with Dunne 2004.On the spiritual significanceof the Buddhist epistemologists, see Steinkellner 1982.For a comparative philosoph-ical study of the debates on the theme of perception between the Buddhist epistemo-logists and their Hindu rivals, see Matilal 1986.On the Yogacara side of Dignaga andDharmakcrti s thought see Dreyfus and Lindtner 1989.On the epistemological tradi-tion particularly in Tibet, see Dreyfus 1997b.10.On the general meaning of this term in Buddhism, see Silk 2000.11.On later distinctions in China and Japan (including among modern Japanese Buddho-logists) between a  Mind-only (Weixin = CittamAtra) school and a  Consciousness-only(Weishi = VijñAnamAtra or VijñaptimAtra) school, with the former (= in fact more or lessZen and Huayan, or Hua-yen) superior to the latter (= the Faxiang school, developedby Xuanzang s followers on the basis of the Chengweishilun), see Lai 1977.In origin thisdistinction relates to the Chinese appropriation of the Buddha-nature (tathAgatagarbha)teachings, and its linkage with Yogacara.See below for the influence of, e.g.,Paramartha on this trend.There is no such systematic distinction in India and Tibet.MAtra could also be translated as  merely , or with Schmithausen 2005 as  nothingbut , making, e.g., the Sanskrit expression cittamAtra quite explicit as (the school of) Nothing but Mind.However, in a lengthy and philosophically-sophisticated recent studyof Yogacara philosophy, based on the Chengweishilun, Dan Lusthaus argues (2002: 5 6;9780203428474_5_end01.qxd 16/6/08 12:00 PM Page 303Notes 303italics original) that Yogacara does not hold  that consciousness itself is ultimately real(paramArtha-sat), much less the only reality.Thus the key Yogacaric phrase vijñapti-mAtra does not mean (as it is often touted in scholarly literature) that  consciousnessalone exists, but rather that  all our efforts to get beyond ourselves are nothing butprojections of our consciousness. Yogacarins [i.e.Yogacaras, followers of Yogacara] treatthe term vijñaptimAtra as an epistemic caution, not an ontological pronouncement.ForLusthaus Yogacara does not deny the real existence of matter independently of con-sciousness.This is not the place to detail disagreements with Lusthaus s approach, whichshows a creative philosophical (re)interpretation that does not (to my mind) fullyconvince as a reading of what Yogacara texts say.Lambert Schmithausen has reviewedLusthaus s book at length in a monograph (2005), and he argues that Lusthaus sreading and translation of key passages are simply not philologically supportable.Schmithausen (2005: 9 10) observes that  Yogacara thought has traditionally beenunderstood as advocating the epistemological position that mind, or consciousness, doesnot.perceive or cognize anything outside itself, but rather cognizes only its own imageof an object, and as propounding the ontological position that there are no entities, espe-cially no material entities, apart from consciousness.This understanding was notinvented by modern scholars but is in line with works of medieval Indian (and Tibetan)authors, both non-Buddhist and Buddhist. Yogacara sources do indeed state thatexternal matter simply does not exist, and what seems to be matter is merely the trans-formation of consciousness (e.g.from the Chengweishilun itself; Schmithausen 2005: 24;cf.42).Moreover Schmithausen shows in passing (ibid.: 20 1, n.28) that Lusthaus s sug-gestion that the tathatA,  thusness , the true nature of things, is for the Chengweishilunsimply a conceptual construct and hence not truly existent (thus making Yogacara onto-logically no different here from Madhyamika), is also unconvincing.He points out (ibid.:10) that the revision of this  traditional interpretation of Yogacara has arisen amongscholars  mainly from the Anglo-Saxon cultural sphere.But he concludes (ibid.: 49) that,while not always found in fully-fledged form, the traditional understanding has not beenundermined, and indeed he expresses his  amazement at the emotional vehemence oftheir [i.e.the modern mainly Anglo-Saxon scholars ] criticism. Is it , Schmithausencontinues,  merely because Yogacara thought as traditionally understood seems socounter-intuitive to modern Western common-sense that some scholars think they must defend the Yogacaras against such an understanding? But isn t this the same modeof procedure that scholars who worked when idealism was the dominant strand in Westernphilosophy are criticized for, viz.reading the presuppositions of one s own time andmilieu into the old texts? It may be difficult to avoid doing this completely, but onecan at least try one s best to understand the texts from within.and to make senseof them on their own premises. Perhaps the wish to avoid the term  idealism used ofYogacara largely reflects the (erroneous) feeling that idealism is out of fashion incurrent Western philosophy [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]