Yogācāra Viññānavadins’ Attitudes Towards the Existence of the Empirical World

Abstract

Yogācāra viññānavada was one school of Buddhism that originated during 04 B.C. They emphasized a very specific philosophical point of view on the existence of environmental facts. Yogācāra school of Buddhism looked at the world as a mere representation of the consciousness. It means that the world and its surrounding is only a concept created by man in his mind. For example, the person who is suffering from eye disease sees the ball of hair as a moon circuit. In the same manner, the man who adheres to defilements looks at the external world and atmosphere as real. This is called mere representation of the consciousness (viñaptimātratā).This matter was explained by Yogācāra depending on the early Buddhist causality. According to Yogācāra there are three evolutions of mind as pravurti viññāna,manana viññāna and ālaya viññāna. The dynamic process of these three evolutions of mind cause to create mere concepts on the external world and the defilements that originated through the above process exists throughout the Saṁsāra. Further, Yogācāra viññānavavadins emphasized three natures of all the phenomena. They are 1)parikalpita, 2)paratantra and 3)pariniṣpanna. In this category parikalpita means universal nature of phenomena or appearance of phenomena. Paratantra means understanding of fact that cause the origin of above phenomena and pariṣispanna means realization of true nature of phenomena (environmental fact) as mere representation of consciousness. Thus according the above factors Yogācāra viññānavavadins’ attitudes toward the environmental fact is, that every phenomenon is a mere concept created in the mind itself. Through this teaching they emphasized nonsubstantiality of the individual and non-substantiality of elements. Therefore they are known as Dharmavadins.