India and career as a translator of Buddhist scriptures, is one of the
most illustrious figures in the history of scholastic Chinese
Buddhism. Born into a scholarly family at the outset of the Tang
(T'ang) Dynasty, he enjoyed a classical Confucian education. Under the
influence of his elder brother, a Buddhist monk, however, he developed
a keen interest in Buddhist subjects and soon became a monk himself at
the age of thirteen. Upon his return to Chang'an in 645, Xuanzang
brought back with him a great number of Sanskrit texts, of which he
was able to translate only a small portion during the remainder of his
lifetime. In addition to his translations of the most essential
Mahayana scriptures, Xuanzang authored the Da tang xi yu ji (Ta-T'ang
Hsi-yu-chi or Records of the Western Regions of the Great T'ang
Dynasty) with the aid of Bianji (Bian-chi). It is through Xuanzang and
his chief disciple Kuiji (K'uei-chi) (632-682) that the Faxiang
(Fa-hsiang or Yogacara/Consciousness-only) School was initiated in
China. In order to honor the famous Buddhist scholar, the Tang Emperor
Gaozong (Gao-tsung) cancelled all audiences for three days after
Xuanzang's death. (See Romanization systems for Chinese terms.)
1. Xuanzang's Beginnings (602-630)
Born of a family possessing erudition for generations in Yanshi
prefecture of Henan province, Xuanzang, whose lay name was Chenhui,
was the youngest of four children. His great-grandfather was an
official serving as a prefect, his grand-father was appointed as
Professor in the National College at the capital, and his father was a
Confucianist of the rigid conservative type who gave up office and
withdrew into seclusion to escape the political turmoil that gripped
China at that time. According to traditional biographies, Xuanzang
displayed a precocious intelligence and seriousness, amazing his
father by his careful observance of the Confucian rituals at the age
of eight. Along with his brothers and sister, he received an early
education from his father, who instructed him in classical works on
filial piety and several other canonical treatises of orthodox
Confucianism.
After the death of Xuanzang's father in 611, his older brother Chensu,
later known as Changjie, became the primary influence on his life. As
a result, he commenced visiting the monastery of Jingtu at Luoyang
where his brother dwelled as a Buddhist monk, and studying sacred
texts of the faith with all the ardor of a young convert. When
Xuanzang requested to take Buddhist orders at the age of thirteen, the
abbot Zheng Shanguo made an exception in his case because of his
precocious sapience.
In 618, due to the civil war breaking out in Henan, Xuanzang and his
brother sought refuge in the mountains of Sichuan, where he spent
three years or so in the monastery of Kong Hui plunging into the study
of various Buddhist texts, such as the Abhidharmakosa-sastra
(Abhidharma Storehouse Treatise. In 622, he was fully ordained as a
monk. Deeply confused by myriad contradictions and discrepancies in
the texts, and not receiving any solutions from his Chinese masters,
Xuanzang decided to go to India and study in the cradle of Buddhism.
2. Pilgrimage to India (630-645)
An imperial decree by the Emperor Taizong (T'ai-tsung) forbade
Xuanzang's proposed visit to India on the grounds on preserving
national security. Instead of feeling deterred from his long-standing
dream, Xuanzang is said to have experienced a vision that strengthened
resolve. In 629, defying imperial proscription, he secretly set out on
his epochal journey to the land of the Buddha from Chang'an.
Xuanzang reports that he travelled by night, hiding during the day,
enduring many dangers, and bereft of a guide after being abandoned by
his companions. After some time in the Gobi Desert, he arrived in
Liangzhou in modern Gansu province, the westernmost extent of the
Chinese frontier at that time and the southern terminus of the Silk
Road trade route connecting China with Central Asia. Here he spent
approximately a month preaching the Buddhist message before being
invited to Hami by King Qu Wentai (Ch'u Wen-tai) of Turfan, a pious
Buddhist of Chinese extraction.
It soon became apparent to Xuanzang that Qu Wentai, although most
hospitable and respectful, planned to detain him for life in his Court
as its ecclesiastical head. In response, Xuanzang undertook a hunger
strike until the king relented, extracting from Xuanzang a promise to
return and spend three years in the kingdom upon his return. After
remaining there for a month more for the sake of the dharma, Xuanzang
resumed his journey in 630, well provided with introductions to all
the kings on his itinerary, including the formidable Turkish Khan
whose power extended to the very gates of India. Having initially left
China against the will of the Emperor, he was no longer an unknown
fugitive fleeing in secret, but an accredited pilgrim with official
standing.
At long last, Xuanzang reached his ultimate destination, where his
strongest personal interest in Buddhism was located and the principal
portion of his time abroad was spent: the Nalanda monastery, located
southwest of the modern city of Bihar in northern Bihar state. As a
far-famed metropolis of Buddhist monastic education, Nalanda was a
veritable monastic city consisting of some ten huge temples with
spaces between divided into eight compounds, surrounded by a high
wall. There were over ten thousand Mahayana monks there engaged in the
study of the orthodox Buddhist canon as well as the Vedas, arithmetic,
and medicine. According to legend, Silabhadra (529-645), abbot of
Nalanda, was considering suicide after years of wasting illness when
he received instructions from deities in a dream, commanding him to
endure and await the arrival of a Chinese monk in order to guarantee
the preservation of the Mahayana tradition abroad. Indeed, Xuanzang
became Silabhadra's disciple in 636 and was initiated into the
Yogacara lineage of Mahayana learning by the venerable abbot. While at
Nalanda, Xuanzang also studied Sanskrit and Brahmana philosophy.
Subsequent studies in India included hetu-vidya (logic), the exegesis
of Mahayana texts such as the Mahayana-sutralamkara (Treatise on the
Scripture of Adorning the Great Vehicle), and Madhyamika
("Middle-ist") doctrines.
The name of the Madhyamika School, founded by Nagarjuna (2nd century
CE), derives from its having sought a middle position between the
realism of the Sarvastivada (Doctrine That All Is Real) School and the
idealism of the Yogacara (Mind Only) School. Xuanzang appears to have
combined these two systems into each other in a more eclectic and
comprehensive Mahayanism. With the approval of his Nalanda mentors,
Xuanzang composed a treatise, Hui zong lun (Hui-tsüng-lun or On the
Harmony of the Principles), which articulates his synthesis.
At Nalanda, Xuanzang became a critic of two major philosophical
systems of Hinduism opposed to Buddhism: the Samkhya and the
Vaiseshika. The former was based upon a dualism of Nature and Spirit.
The latter was a realist system, immediate and direct in its realism,
resting upon the acceptance of the data of consciousness and
experience as such: in brief, it was a melding of monism and atomism.
Such beliefs were in absolute contradiction to the acosmic idealism of
the Buddhist Yogacara, which evenly repelled the substantial entity of
the ego and the objective existence of matter. Xuanzang also critiqued
the atheistic monism of the Jains, especially inveighing against what
he saw as their caricature of Buddhism in terms of Jain monastic garb
and iconography.
Xuanzang's success in religious and philosophical disputes evidently
aroused the attention of some Indian potentates, including the King of
Assam and the poet-cum-dramatist king Harsha (r. 606-647), who was
regarded as a Buddhist patron saint upon the throne like Ashoka and
Kanishka of old. An eighteen-day religious assembly was convoked in
Harsha's capital of Kanauj during the first week of the year 643,
during which Xuanzang allegedly defeated five hundred Brahmins, Jains,
and heterodox Buddhists in spirited debate.
Following these public successes in India, Xuanzang resolved to return
to China by way of Central Asia. He followed the caravan-track that
led across the Pamirs to Dunhuang. In the spring of 644, he reached
Khotan and awaited a reply to his request for return addressed to the
Emperor Taizong. In the month of November, Xuanzang left for Dunhuang
by a decree of the Emperor, and arrived in the Chinese capital
Chang'an the first month of the Chinese Lunar Year 645.
3. His Return to China and Career as Translator (645-664)
Traditional sources report that Xuanzang's arrival in Chang'an was
greeted with an imperial audience and an offer of official position
(which Xuanzang declined), followed by an assembly of all the Buddhist
monks of the capital city, who accepted the manuscripts, relics, and
statues brought back by the pilgrim and deposited them in the Temple
of Great Happiness. It was in this Temple that Xuanzang devoted the
rest of his life to the translation of the Sanskrit works that he had
brought back out of the wide west, assisted by a staff of more than
twenty translators, all well-versed in the knowledge of Chinese,
Sanskrit, and Buddhism itself. Besides translating Buddhist texts and
dictating the Da tang xi yu ji in 646, Xuanzang also translated the
Dao de jing (Tao-te Ching) of Laozi (Lao-tzu) into Sanskrit and sent
it to India in 647.
His translations may, by and large, be divided into three phases: the
first six years (645-650), focusing on the Yogacarabhumi-sastra; the
middle ten years (651-660), centering on the Abhidharmakosa-sastra;
and the last four years (661-664), concentrating upon the
Maha-prajnaparamita-sutra. In each phase of his career as a
translator, Xuanzang saw his task as introducing Indian Buddhist texts
to Chinese audiences in all their integrity. According to Thomas
Watters, the total number of texts brought by Xuanzang from India to
China is six hundred and fifty seven, enumerated as follows:
Mahayanist sutras: 224 items
Mahayanist sastras: 192
Sthavira sutras, sastras and Vinaya: 14
Mahasangika sutras, sastras and Vinaya: 15
Mahisasaka sutras, sastras and Vinaya: 22
Sammitiya sutras, sastras and Vinaya: 15
Kasyapiya sutras, sastra and Vinaya: 17
Dharmagupta sutras, Vinaya, sastras: 42
Sarvastivadin sutras, Vinaya, sastras: 67
Yin-lun (Treatises on the science of Inference): 36
Sheng-lun (Etymological treatises): 13
4. The Faxiang School
a. The development of Yogacara
The Chinese Faxiang School, derived from the Indian Yogacara (yoga
practice) School, is based upon the writings of two brothers, Asanga
and Vasubandhu, who explicated a course of practice wherein hindrances
are removed according to a sequence of stages, from which it gets its
name. The appellation of the school originated with the title of an
important fourth- or fifth-century CE text of the school, the
Yogacarabhumi-sastra. Yogacara attacked both the provisional practical
realism of the Madhyamika School of Mahayana Buddhism and the complete
realism of Theravada Buddhism. Madhyamika is regarded as the
nihilistic or Emptiness School, whereas Yogacara is seen as the
realistic or Existence School. While the former is characterized as
Mahayana due to its central theme of emptiness, the latter might be
considered to be semi-Mahayana to a point for three basic reasons: (1)
the Yogacara remains realistic like the Abhidharma School; (2) it
expounds the three vehicles side by side without being confined to the
Bodhisattvayana; and (3) it does not accent the doctrine of Buddha
nature.
The other name of the school, Vijnanavada
(Consciousness-affirming/Doctrine of Consciousness), is more
descriptive of its philosophical position, which in short is that the
reality a human being perceives does not exist. Yogacara becomes much
better known, nevertheless, not for its practices, but for its rich
development in psychological and metaphysical theory. The Yogacara
thinkers took the theories of the body-mind aggregate of sentient
beings that had been under development in earlier Indian schools such
as the Sarvastivada, and worked them into a more fully articulated
scheme of eight consciousnesses, the most weighty of which was the
eighth, or store consciousness — the alaya-vijnana.
The Yogacara School is also known for the development of other key
concepts that would hold great influence not merely within their
system, but within all forms of later Mahayana to come. They embody
the theory of the three natures of the dependently originated,
completely real, and imaginary, which are understood as a Yogacara
response to the Madhyamika's truth of emptiness. Yogacara is also the
original source for the theory of the three bodies of the Buddha, and
greatly expands the notions of categories of elemental constructs.
Yogacara explored and propounded basic doctrines that were to be
fundamental in the future growth of Mahayana and that influenced the
rise of Tantric Buddhism. Its central doctrine is that only
consciousness (vijnanamatra; hence the name Vijnanavada) is real, and
that mind is the ultimate reality. In other words, external objects do
not exist; nothing exists outside the mind. The common view that
external phenomena exist is due to a misconception that is removable
through a meditative or yogic process, which brings a complete
withdrawal from these fictitious externals, and an inner concentration
and tranquility may accordingly be bodied forth.
Yogacara is an alternative system of Buddhist logic. According to it,
the object is not at all as it seems, and thus can not be of any
service to knowledge. It is therefore unreal when consciousness is the
sole reality. The object is only a mode of consciousness. Its
appearance although objective and external is in fact the
transcendental illusion, because of which consciousness is bifurcated
into the subject-object duality. Consciousness is creative and its
creativity is governed by the illusive idea of the object. Reality is
to be viewed as an Idea or a Will. This creativity is manifested at
different levels of consciousness.
Since this school believes that only ideation exists, it is also
called the Idealistic School. In China, it was established by Xuanzang
and his principal pupil Kuiji who systematized the teaching of his
masters recorded in two essential works: the Fa yuan i lin zhang
(Fa-yuan i-lin-chang or Chapter on the Forest of Meanings in the
Garden of Law) and the Cheng wei shi lun shu ji (Ch'eng wei-shih lun
shu-chi or Notes on the Treatise on the Completion of Ideation Only).
On account of the school's idealistic accent it is known as Weishi
(Wei-shih) or Ideation Only School; yet because it is concerned with
the specific character of all the dharmas, it is often called the
Faxiang School as well. Besides, this school argues that not all
beings possess pure seeds and, therefore, not all of them are capable
of attaining Buddhahood.
The central concept of this school is borrowed from a statement by
Vasubandhu — idam sarvam vijnaptimatrakam, "All this world is ideation
only." It strongly claims that the external world is merely a
fabrication of our consciousness, that the external world does not
exist, and that the internal ideation presents an appearance as if it
were an outer world. The whole external world is, hence, an illusion
according to it.
b. Metaphysics of Mere-Consciousness
Broadly speaking, Mere-Consciousness may cover the eight
consciousnesses, the articulation of which forms one of the most
seminal and distinctive aspects of the doctrine of the Yogacara
School, transmitted to East Asia where it received the somewhat
pejorative designations of Dharma-character School and
Consciousness-only School. According to this doctrine, sentient beings
possess eight distinct layers of consciousness, the first five — the
visual consciousness, auditory consciousness, olfactory consciousness,
gustatory consciousness, and tactile consciousness — corresponding to
the sense perceptions, the sixth discriminatory consciousness to the
thinking mind, the seventh manas consciousness to the notion of ego,
and the eighth alaya-consciousness to the repository of all the
impressions from one's past experiences. As the first seven of these
arise on the basis of the eighth, they are called the transformed
consciousnesses. In contrast, the eighth is known as the base
consciousness, store consciousness, or seed consciousness. And in
particular, it is this last consciousness that the Mere-Consciousness
is all about.
One of the foremost themes discussed in the school is the
alaya-vijnana or storehouse consciousness, which stores and
coordinates all the notions reflected in the mind. Thus, it is a
storehouse where all the pure and contaminated ideas are blended or
interfused. This principle might be illustrated by the school's
favorite citation:
"A seed produces a manifestation,
A manifestation perfumes a seed.
The three elements (seed, manifestation, and perfume) turn on and on,
The cause and effect occur at one and the same time."
It is the doctrine of consciousness or mind as the basis for so-called
"external" objects that gave the Cittamatra (Mind Only) tradition its
name. Apparently external objects are constituted by consciousness and
do not exist apart from it. Vasubandhu began his
Vimsatika vijnapti-matrata-siddhih (Twenty Verses on
Consciousness-only) by stating: "All this is only perception, since
consciousness manifests itself in the form of nonexistent objects."
There is only a flow of perceptions. This flow, however, really
exists, and it is mental by nature, as in terms of the Buddhist
division of things it has to be either mental or physical. The flow of
experiences could barely be a physical or material flow. There might
be a danger in calling this "idealism," because it is rather
dissimilar from forms of idealism in Western philosophy, in which it
is deemed necessary for a newcomer to negate and transcend previous
theories and philosophies through criticism, but the situation in
Buddhism, especially Yogacara Buddhism, is such that it developed its
doctrines by inheriting the entire body of thought of its former
masters. Nonetheless, if "idealism" denotes that subjects and objects
are no more than a flow of experiences and perceptions, which are of
the same nature, and these experiences, just as perceptions, are
mental, then this could be called a form of "dynamic idealism."
Because this school maintains that no external reality exists, while
retaining the position that knowledge exists, assuming knowledge
itself is the object of consciousness. It, therefore, postulates a
higher storage consciousness, which is the final basis of the apparent
individual. The universe consists in an infinite number of possible
ideas that lie inactively in storage. Such dormant consciousness
projects an interrupted sequence of thoughts, while it itself is in
restless flux till the karma, or accumulated consequences of past
deeds, blows out. This storage consciousness takes in all the
impressions of previous experiences, which shape up the seeds of
future karmic action, an illusory force creating outer categories that
are actually only fictions of the mind. So illusive a force determines
the world of difference and belongs to human nature, sprouting the
erroneous notions of an I and a non-I. That duality can only be
conquered by enlightenment, which effects the transformation of an
ordinary person into a Buddha.
c. Some objections answered
Certain objections were interposed to level at Yogacara's doctrine of
consciousness. Vasubhandhu, again in his Vimsatika, undertook to prove
the invalidity of some of these:
* Spatiotemporal determination would be impossible — experiences
of object X are not occurrent everywhere and at every time so there
must be some external basis for our experiences.
* Many people experience X and not just one person, as in the case
of a hallucination.
* Hallucinations can be determined because they do not possess
pragmatic results. It does not follow that entities, which we
generally accept as real, can be placed in the same class.
In reply, Vasubandhu argued that these were after all no objections;
they simply failed to show that perception-only as a teaching was
beyond the limits of what could be concretely reasoned. Spatiotemporal
determination can be elucidated on the analogy of dream experience,
where a complete and surreal world is created with objects appearing
to have spatiotemporal localization despite the fact that they do not
exist apart from the mind which is cognizing them. Moreover, the
second objection can be met by recourse to the wider Buddhist
religious framework. The hells and their tortures, which are taught by
Buddhist beliefs as the result of wicked deeds, and to be endured for
a very long time till purified, are experienced as the collective
fruit of the previous karmas done by those hell inmates. The torturers
of hell obviously can not really exist, otherwise they would have been
reborn in hell themselves and would too experience the sufferings
associated with it. If this were the case then how could they jovially
inflict sufferings upon their fellow inmates? Thus they must be
illusive, and yet they are experienced by a number of people. Finally,
as in a dream objects bear some pragmatic purpose within that dream,
and likewise in hell, so in everyday life. Furthermore, as physical
activity can be directed toward unreal objects in a dream owing, it is
said, to nervous irritation on the part of the dreamer, so too in
daily life.
e. The Vijnaptimatratasiddhi-sastra
Representing a two-hundred-year development within the Vijnanavadin
tradition subsequent to the Lankavatara Sutra (Sutra on the Buddha's
Entering the Country of Lanka) and being the primary text of the
Faxiang School, the Vijnaptimatratasiddhi-sastra is an exhaustive
study of the alaya-vijnana and the sevenfold development of the manas,
manovijnana, and the five sensorial consciousnesses. As a creative and
elaborate exposition of Vasubandhu's Trimsika-vijnapti-matrata-siddhi
(Treatise in Thirty Stanzas on Consciousness Only) rendered by
Xuanzang in 648 at Great Happiness Monastery, it synthesizes the ten
most significant commentaries written on it, and becomes the
enchiridion of the new Faxiang School of Buddhist idealism. It is
mainly a translation by Xuanzang in 659 of Dharmapala's commentary on
the Trimsika-vijnapti-matrata-siddhi, yet it also contains edited
translations of other masters' works on the same verses. This is the
only translation by Xuanzang that is not a direct translation of a
text, but instead a selective and evaluative editorial drawing on ten
distinct texts. Since Kuiji aligned himself with this text as assuming
the role of Xuanzang's successor, the East Asian tradition has treated
the Vijnaptimatratasiddhi-sastra as the pivotal exemplar of Xuanzang's
teachings.
In both style and content, the Vijnaptimatratasiddhi-sastra symbolizes
a superior advance over the earlier Lankavatara Sutra, a basic Faxiang
School's canonical text that sets forth quite a few hallmarks of
Mahayana position, such as the eight consciousnesses and the
tathagatagarbha (Womb of the Buddha-to-be). Instead of bearing the
latter's cryptically aphoristic form, Xuanzang's treatise is a
detailed and coherent analysis, a scholastic apologetics on the
doctrine of Consciousness-only. Without any reference to the
tathagatagarbha itself, the Vijnaptimatratasiddhi-sastra firmly
grounds its pan-consciousness upon Absolute Suchness or the existence
of the mind as true reality. Aside from human consciousness, another
principle is accepted as real — the so-called suchness, which is the
equivalent of the void of the Madhyamika School.
The Vijnaptimatratasiddhi-sastra spells out how there can be a common
empirical world for different individuals who ideate or construct
particular objects, and who possess distinct bodies and sensory
systems. According to Xuanzang, the universal "seeds" in the store
consciousness account for the common appearance of things, while
particular "seeds" make a description of the differences.
f. Faxiang doctrines
Being a first and foremost idealistic school of Mahayana Buddhism, the
Faxiang School categorically discerns chimerical phenomena manifested
in consistent patterns of regularity and continuity; in order to
justify this order in which only defiled elements could prevail before
enlightenment is attained, it created the tenet of the alaya-vijnana.
Sense perceptions are commanded as regular and coherent by a store of
consciousnesses, of which one is consciously unaware. Then, sense
impressions produce certain configurations in this insensibility that
"perfumate" later impressions so that they appear consistent and
regular. Each and every single one of beings possesses this seed
consciousness, which therefore becomes a sort of collective
consciousness that takes control of human perceptions of the world,
though this world does not exist at all according to the very tenet.
This school's forerunner had emerged in India roughly the second
century AD, yet had its period of greatest productivity in the fourth
century, during the time of Asanga and Vasubandha. Following them, the
school divided into two branches, the Nyayanusarino Vijnanavadinah
(Vijnanavada School of the Logical Tradition) and the Agamanusarino
Vijnanavadinah (Vijnanavada School of the Scriptural Tradition), with
the former sub-school postulating the standpoints of the logician
Dignaga (c. AD 480-540) and his successor, Dharmakirti (c. AD
600?-680?).
This consciousness-oriented school of ideology was largely represented
in China by the Faxiang School, called Popsang in Korea, and Hosso in
Japan. The radical teachings of Yogacara became known in China
primarily through a work of Paramartha, a sixth-century Indian
missionary-translator. His rendition of the
Mahayana-samparigraha-sastra (Compendium of the Great Vehicle) by
Asanga provided a sound base for the Sanlun (Three-Treatise) School,
which preceded the Faxiang School as the vehicle of Yogacara thought
in China. Faxiang is the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit term
dharmalaksana (characteristic of dharma), referring to the school's
basal emphasis on the unique characteristics of the dharmas that make
up the world, which appears in human ideation. According to Faxiang
doctrines, there are five categories of dharmas: (1) eight mental
dharmas, encompassing the five sense consciousnesses, cognition, the
cognitive faculty, and the store consciousness; (2) eleven elements
relating to appearances or material forms; (3) fifty-one mental
capacities or functions, activities, and dispositions; (4) twenty-four
situations, processes, and things not associated with the mind — for
example, time and becoming; and (5) six non-conditioned or non-created
elements — for instance, space and the nature of existence.
Alaya-consciousness is posited as the receptacle of the imprint of
thoughts and deeds, thus it is the dwelling of sundry karmic seeds.
These "germs" develop into form, feeling, perception, impulse, and
consciousness, collectively known as the Five Aggregates. Then
ideation gradually takes shape, which triggers off a self or mind
against an outer world. Finally comes the awareness of the objects of
thought via sense perceptions and ideas. The store consciousness must
be purified of its subject-object duality and notions of false
existence, and restored to its pure state tantamount to buddhahood,
the Absolute Suchness, and the undifferentiated. In line with these
three elements of false imagination, right knowledge, and suchness is
the three modes in which things respectively are: (1) the mere
fictions of false imagination; (2) under certain conditions to
relatively exist; and (3) in the perfect mode of being. Corresponding
to this threefold version of the modes of existence is the tri-body
doctrine of the Buddha — the Dharma Body, the Reward Body, and the
Response Body, a creed that was put into its systematic and highly
developed theory by Yogacara thinkers. The distinguishing features of
the Faxiang School lie in its highlight of meditation and broadly
psychological analyses. Seen in this light, it is a fry cry from the
other predominant Mahayana stream, Madhyamika, where the stress is
entirely upon dialectics and logical arguments.
The base consciousness is interpreted as the container of the karmic
impressions or seeds, nourished by us beings in the process of our
existence. These seeds, ripening in the course of future
circumstances, find the nearest parallel to the present-day
understanding of genes. In view of the foregoing, philosophers of this
school have constantly essayed to explain in detail how karmic force
actually operates and affects us on a concrete, personal level.
Comprised in this development of consciousness theory is the concept
of conscious justification — phenomena that are presumably external to
us can never exist but in intimate association with consciousness
itself. Such a notion is commonly referred to as "Mind Only."
The fundamental early canonical texts that expound Yogacara doctrines
are such scriptures as the (Sutra on Understanding Profound and
Esoteric Doctrine, the Srimala-sutra (Sutra on the Lion's Roar of
Queen Srimala), and treatises like the Mahayana-samparigraha-sastra,
the Prakaranaryavaca-sastra (Acclamation of the Scriptural Teaching),
and the Yogacarabhumi, etc.
5. Conclusion
As an early and influential Chinese Buddhist monk, Xuanzang embodies
the tensions inherent in Chinese Buddhism: filial piety versus
monastic discipline, Confucian orthodoxy versus Mahayana
progressivism, etc. Such tensions can be seen not only in his personal
legacies, which include the extremely popular Chinese novel based on
his travels, Xiyouji (Journey to the West), but also in the career of
scholastic Buddhism in China.
For a time during the middle of the Tang Dynasty the Faxiang School
achieved a high degree of eminence and popularity across China, but
after the passing of Xuanzang and Kuiji the school swiftly declined.
One of the factors resulting in this decadence was the anti-Buddhist
imperial persecutions of 845. Another likely factor was the harsh
criticism of Faxiang by members of the Huayan (Hua-yen) School. In
addition, the philosophy of this school, with its abstruse terminology
and hairsplitting analysis of the mind and the senses, was too alien
to be accepted by the practical-minded Chinese.
6. References and Further Reading
* Bapat, P. V., and K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, eds. 2500 Years of
Buddhism. Delhi: Government of India Press, 1964.
* Bernstein, Richard. Ultimate Journey: Retracing the Path of an
Ancient Buddhist Monk Who Crossed Asia in Search of Enlightenment:
Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.
* Brown, Brian Edward. The Buddha Nature: A Study of the
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