Yogacara

"The Essentials of Buddhist Meditation" is a classic Buddhist meditation instruction manual deeply rooted in the Indian Buddhist "calming-and-insight" meditation tradition. Within its tradition, it is the universally-acknowledged standard beginning-to-intermediate meditation manual, one which offers perhaps the most reliable, comprehensive, and practically-useful Buddhist meditation instruction currently available in English.

Vasubandhu one of the most famous Mahayana Buddhist philosophers wrote works on a vast variety of subjects.

This dissertation examines the relation between the Madhyamaka and Yogacara schools of Buddhism, focusing on the Yogacara perspective. It reevaluates the opinion, generally accepted among modern scholars, that the Madhyamaka and Yogacara schools constitute divergent and radically opposed movements within the Buddhist Tradition. To address this issue, the dissertation distinguishes between two separate questions. The first question is whether the early Yogacara writers were actively refuting what they perceived to be a distinct religious school within the Buddhist tradition.

Peaceful Action, Open Heart shines 60 years of study and practice upon one of the crowning scriptures of the path of the Buddha, and is destined to be known as one of the most significant writings by Thich Nhat Hanh. The Lotus Sutra is one of the most revered of Mahayana sacred texts and is sometimes called "the king of sutras." Despite this fact, there are very few commentaries in English available today. Thich Nhat Hanh explores the Sutra’s main theme-- that everyone has the capacity to become a Buddha, and that Buddha-nature is inherent in everything--but he also uniquely emphasizes the sutra’s insight that Buddha-nature is the basis for peaceful action. Since we all will one day become a Buddha, he says, we can use mindfulness practices right now to understand and find solutions to current world challenges. In his interpretation of the sutra, he suggests that if the practices, views, and insights of the Lotus Sutra would find application not only by individuals but also by nations, it would offer concrete solutions to transform individual suffering and the global challenges facing the world today.

This highly original work explores the concept of self-awareness or self-consciousness in Buddhist thought. Its central thesis is that the Buddhist theory of self-cognition originated in a soteriological discussion of omniscience among the Mahasamghikas, and then evolved into a topic of epistemological inquiry among the Yogacarins. To illustrate this central theme, this book explores a large body of primary sources in Chinese, Pali, Sanskrit and Tibetan, most of which are presented to an English readership for the first time. It makes available important resources for the study of the Buddhist philosophy of mind.

Are there Buddhist conceptions of the unconscious? If so, are they more Freudian, Jungian, or something else? If not, can Buddhist conceptions be reconciled with the Freudian, Jungian, or other models. These are some of the questions that have motivated modern scholarship to approach alayavijnan, the storehouse consciousness, formulated in Yogacara Buddhism as a subliminal reservoir of tendencies, habits, and future possibilities.

Of the many translators who carried the Buddhist doctrine to China, Paramärtha, a missionary-monk who arrived in China in A.D. 546, ranks as the translator par excellence of the sixth century. Introducing philosophical ideas that would subsequently excite the Chinese imagination to develop the great schools of Sui and Tang Buddhism, Paramartha's translations are almost exclusively of Yogacara Buddhist texts on the nature of the mind and consciousness.

Giving a new translation and interpretation of the basic works of Vasubandhu, the author shows that Yogacara metaphysics is basically the same as that of the early Buddhism. He contends that the Yogacara writings are open to interpretation in terms of realistic pluralism, and thus challenges their traditional interpretation in terms of idealistic monism. His translation is faithful to the original, arguments convincing and consistent, and presentation clear and readable.