More on what seemed to make Yogacara such an Improvement

So what was really so positive about this change? A few doctrinal notes follow:

Tathagatagharba:

This is the idea of the Buddha Nature (or Essence or Matrix or Seed) in all of us. In this sense we are all Buddhas. Our Buddha-seed needs to be grown, though, and that means we must nurture it in an analogous way to the way we would nurture plant seeds if we wanted to grow a garden. We need to give it the sun it needs, the right amount of water (neither too much nor too little – Buddhism is all about the Middle path, after all), etc. We are sleeping Buddhas because our minds are just like Buddha minds ready to become awakened.

Obscurations (avarana) are hiding these facts from us, in this doctrine, as clouds hide the vastness of the sky beyond on a very dark (and wild and woolly) day. This concern at avarana (and its imagery) especially appealed to Mahayana Buddhists in China but affected all of Mahayana Buddhist thinking. There are two types of avarana, klesa avarana (caused by passions and the idea of self) and jñeya avarana (caused by cognition), and Arhats are supposed to have only dealt with the first type.

The Three Kayas of Buddhas

These are three dimensions or bodies of Buddhas. Works popular in the second turning literature had mentioned two bodies: rupakaya (Siddhartha himself as a man was a rupakaya) and dharmakaya (some kind of ultimate Buddha dimension). Yogacara tradition calls the formed rupakaya dimension nirmanakaya (a ‘measured-out’ dimension), uses the same word for the same second dimension and adds sambhogakaya. This translates as the enjoyment dimension. The distinction between all three is believed to be such a subtle one that only a Bodhisattva at a somewhat advanced level can perceive it.

Ordinary beings can somewhat experience all the kayas, however, by experiencing a statue of a Buddha. The final kaya is held to link the first two somehow. Thus the studied iconography I will mention in a future post is regarded as important as its proper execution is the avenue that best allows this luminous kaya linkage to be experienced by the ordinary mortal. This is part of the reason for the jewellery and elaborate clothing often depicted – that’s the best material way to indicate (if unfortunately imperfectly) the greatness of the luminosity.

Meditating on the Buddhas (as many Mahayana Buddhists do) can even somewhat reveal this three-kaya complex for normal mortals, too. It’s meant to ‘tap into’ our own Buddha-like dimensions.

This all may be a rationale for lay devotionalism but it is stressed that only the advanced Bodhisattva may experience the radiance to the full extent. Again Chinese and Zen Buddhists have some confusing sayings (in this case along with some from the Tantric/Vajrayana form of Tibetan Buddhism) that arise from this idea of the three kayas. In Zen, for example, it has been said that “the trees, stones and mountains all preach sunyata” and that “the teaching of vulture peak [where Siddhartha preached about sunyata] is still going on”. This is meant to mean that there is Buddha-radiance around today for those who will see it and learn from the sambhogakaya.

The devotional “Pure Land” Schools such as Amitabha devotees connected especially with the idea of sambhogakaya.

The Eight Consciousnesses

Regular Buddhism notes six consciousnesses (the five Western senses and the sense of mind). Yogacara adds what it calls store-consciousness and defilement of mind bringing the total to eight.

Store-consciousness contains our karmic seeds (vasana or samskara) that affect us by making us see ourselves as subjects. Other Buddhists have claimed that this doctrine sneaks the idea of self back into a Buddhism where it doesn’t belong. The Yogacarins counteract this criticism by reaffirming the impermanence and dependence of all of the consciousnesses and asserting that the difficulty of this doctrine for the human mind is part of the reason it is part of the third turning. They ask for trust that this doctrine is in no way eternalist.

The defilement of mind (klistamanas) is the consciousness that perceives the store-consciousness to be an ego and formulates the idea of subject and object.

The clear aim of Buddhism in this connection, then, is to purify our minds of these last two consciousnesses.

The Three Natures (Svabhavas)

These three new philosophical concepts are needed, according to the Yogacara view, to give an adequate account of reality (in this philosophical role, they replace the two truths in a way). There are two things regarded as being wrong to do: attribution (samoropa) and negation or “cutting off (vccheda)”, linked to the first two turnings. Our experience, then, goes on and produces appearances and there are three progressive aspects of this:

1) Parikalpita – constructed and mistaken knowing (an issue for epistemology);

2) Paratantra – dependent existence (an ontological question); and

3) Parinispanna – perfected existence (a soteriological matter).

Realisation that normal knowledge (parikalpita) is mistaken leads to an end of externalising and ideas of subject and object and of paratantra which also leads to parinispanna, the true realisation of paratantra. Rationalisation of paratantra is not sufficient, realisation is required, and paratantra is not negation as that would be productive of a nihilist parinispanna. Parinispanna is regarded as a cleansing of parikalpita from paratantra (as a nugget of gold is refined out of its usual ore).