Yogacara and Buddhist Idealism

A condensed, point-by-point summary of the module, for reviewing right before a test or exam.

1. Asanga and Vasubandhu: Founders of the Yogacara School. Half-brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu, working in Gandhara, gave Yogacara its foundational treatises.
2. The Doctrine of Consciousness-Only (Vijnaptimatra). Vijnaptimatra holds that all experience is representation of consciousness, without independently existing external objects.
3. The Eight Consciousnesses and the Alaya-Vijnana. Yogacara adds a klistamanas and a storehouse alaya-vijnana to the six consciousnesses of earlier Buddhism.
4. The Three Natures: Imagined, Dependent, and Perfected. The three-natures doctrine analyzes experience as imagined duality superimposed on a dependent flow, empty in its perfected aspect.
5. Yogacara Epistemology and Buddhist Logic. Yogacara metaphysics gave rise to a rigorous pramana tradition analyzing perception, inference, and valid cognition.
6. Dignaga and Dharmakirti on Perception and Inference. Dignaga and Dharmakirti systematized Buddhist logic around momentary particulars, apoha, and rigorous inference.
7. Yogacara versus Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Rivalry. Madhyamaka and Yogacara traded charges of nihilism and substantialism in a centuries-long doctrinal rivalry.
8. Yogacara's Transmission into East Asian Buddhism. Paramartha and Xuanzang carried Yogacara into China, founding schools later transmitted to Korea and Japan.