Yogachara

Yogachara (Sanskrit: Yogācāra) is an influential tradition of Buddhist philosophy and psychology emphasizing the study of cognition, perception, and consciousness through the interior lens of meditation, as well as philosophical reasoning (hetuvidyā). Yogachara was one of the two most influential traditions of Mahayana Buddhism in India, along with Madhyamaka. The compound Yogācāra literally means "practice of yoga", or "one whose practice is yoga", hence the name of the school is literally "the school of the yogins". Yogācāra was also variously termed Vijñānavāda (the doctrine of consciousness), Vijñaptivāda (the doctrine of ideas or percepts) or Vijñaptimātratā-vāda (the doctrine of 'mere representation'), which is also the name given to its major theory of mind which seeks to deconstruct how we perceive the world. There are several interpretations of this main theory, which include various forms of idealism, as well as a phenomenology or representationalism. Aside from this, Yogācāra also developed an elaborate analysis of consciousness (vijñāna) and mental phenomena (dharmas), as well as an extensive system of Buddhist spiritual practice, i.e. yoga. The movement has been traced to the first centuries of the common era and seems to have evolved as some yogis of the Sarvāstivāda and Sautrāntika traditions in north India adopted Mahayana Buddhism. The brothers Asaṅga and Vasubandhu (both c. 4-5th century) are considered the classic philosophers and systematizers of this school, while it is also traditionally attributed by Buddhist believers to the figure of Maitreya-nātha. Yogācāra was later imported to Tibet and East Asia by figures like Shantaraksita (8th century) and Xuanzang (7th-century). Today, Yogācāra ideas and texts continue to be influential subjects of study for Tibetan Buddhism and East Asian Buddhism.