Yogachara

And then he talks about the field of the inexhaustible storehouse with not a single thing in it.

There was a term called alaya-vijnana, which means storehouse consciousness, which in the writings of the Yogacara teachers, specifically the Lankavatara Sutra, which again we're going to talk about next week actually, This is, in many ways, just an identical term with shunyata, but in a very specific sense with this metaphysics of the mind, which I'm very excited to get into all of that next time.

It's certainly a reference that Nishitani is making to Yogacara and this whole mind model of the storehouse consciousness where the karmic seeds of our actions are stored and they later bear fruit.

And they bear fruit in the form of these different forms of sense consciousness and mental consciousness and in the form of the rising of our will, which has this sort of karmic craving that directs how we respond to all of these forms of consciousness.

I say Nishitani is aware of all this because he actually directly references this model, this eight consciousnesses model of the mind within religion and nothingness.

yeah

exactly sort of like I thought well I'll sit near enough that when I get off the train I can thank them again there's a latent tendency towards wisdom to vidya so you know there are latent tendencies towards goodness that can be stimulated by spiritual practice by the circumstances of life I think the anusaya perhaps would be in the Yogacara philosophy.

Gosh, it's going on and on.

But yeah, it would be in the Yogacara philosophy, the relative and absolute alia.

So the alia is the storehouse consciousness.

It literally means store, like Himalaya means a store or treasury or abode of snow.

And then he talks about the field of the inexhaustible storehouse with not a single thing in it.

There was a term called alaya-vijnana, which means storehouse consciousness, which in the writings of the Yogacara teachers, specifically the Lankavatara Sutra, which again we're going to talk about next week actually, This is in many ways just an identical term with shunyata, but like in a very specific sense with this metaphysics of the mind, which I'm very excited to get into all of that next time.

It's certainly a reference that Nishitani is making to Yogacara and this whole mind model of the storehouse consciousness where the karmic seeds of our actions are stored and they later bear fruit.

And they bear fruit in the form of these different forms of sense consciousness and mental consciousness and in the form of the rising of our will, which has this sort of karmic craving that directs how we respond to all of these forms of consciousness.

I say Nishitani is aware of all this because he actually directly references this model, this eight consciousnesses model of the mind within religion and nothingness.

They, w- within sort of Buddhist classification of different philosophical views, they argue that the, the different views are more or less likely to help you succeed in that, right? Um, so, um, uh, if you, um, look at sort of, uh, the, these classification of different philosophical positions that you find in Madhyamaka texts, of course Madhyamaka always comes out at top, right? So that's the, that's the, the, that's the, the, the most sophisticated view you can have.

But then below that, there are also various other theories like, for example, Yogachara idealism and Abhidharma, the, the views of the Abhidharma and so on, that are also sort of steps in the right direction.

Sure.

Right? And so to that extent, none of these theories are ultimately true, including Madhyamaka, right? But they provide better and better means for escape from, uh, existential suffering, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, there are, there are interpreters who would so, uh, interpret Yogachara idealism, so another, another form of Buddhist philosophy, as a form of illusionism, so particularly Mark Siderits.

He's, he's defended that view.

based on different disciplines, disciplines of observation and reasoning, or you could say based on the study of cause and effect, which is so much of what Buddhism teaches and encourages us to study.

The early Buddhist teachings in particular, but also later Mahayana teachings like Yogacara, which is also quite old.

So my talk tonight will be another talk that integrates Zen and modern humanism.

And it has been informed by recent events, as well as long-standing social dynamics and issues that many of us are familiar with.

And, and I, and I, I'm still thinking about that.

There's a model that comes out of the Yogachara school of Buddhism, and it's called the eight consciousnesses, or the eight minds, we could say.

And it's the five physical senses: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touch.

And they are understood as fields.

This make sense?

Yes.

Then there was a need to look at this functioning of the mind in more detail, and the Yogachara school split it into three functions.

And the functions are...

The tightest pairing, the two voices that say the same thing in the languages of two eras, is this.

In ancient India, a school of Buddhist thought called Yogacara put forward a doctrine called Siddhamatra, translated literally, mind only.

The idea is not that the world is a hallucination you are imagining privately, It is that everything that appears, objects, bodies, other people, the sky is made of the same stuff as a dream, the activity of consciousness itself.

There is no world out there and mind in here.

And there is some debate on which school exactly should, for example, be assigned to.

But Most people assign him to a school called Yogacara, which is often called mind only.

And they say that kind of the fundamental constituent of reality is mind.

And there are other schools like the Madhyamaka, which is the middle way, which say that even that's not enough.

I think it's very important.

But it's also important to realize that many cultures and traditions and philosophies don't view physics or even computational information as the kind of foundational level of reality.

And there are different schools of Buddhism, but one school that now I'm actually particularly interested in is called the Yogacara school or mind only.

And they say that actually the most patrimonious description of reality is that mind is fundamental or maybe even the only thing we need to explain reality.

But a snowstorm trapped Fayan and his friends at Dijon's.

And Fayan was known as kind of a bit of a know-it-all, scholarly type, expert in Buddhist philosophy, with fancy names like the Yogacara school, blah, blah.

And he shows up at this demolisher of pretentiousness place accidentally.

Maybe Dijon was aware of this, but when this Fayon was about to leave, Dijon says in Case 20 of the Book of Serenity, where are you going? Fayon's like, around, on pilgrimage, rambling around, wandering around.