THE YOGACARA OR IDEALIST SCHOOL

The Yogacara or Idealist School of Buddhism was founded in India in the 5th century A.D. by the brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu.  It proceeded from where the Intermediate School of Nagarjuna left off in the 2nd century.  Nagarjuna held that anything whatsoever was in fact merely a loose collection of pulsating, transitory "elements." These elements when closely examined were no more than  mental phenomena or phantasms.  The Idealist School proposed similarly that only mind existed, and that the objects of its thoughts were ideas only.

But how then did the mind always perceive what other minds did and not just what it was inclined to perceive?  The answer was simply that there was a reservoir or store of perceptions on which all minds drew, namely the "consciousness that holds all" or the "receptacle of consciousness" (Alaya-vijnana).  This was the cosmic all-mind.  To identify with it was to be in Nirvana.  This was destined to have great influence on later Buddhist thought.  

NAGARJUNA AND THE INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL

In the 2nd century A.D., Nagarjuna organized in India what came to be called the Madhyamika or Intermediate School, so called because it was intermediate between the realism of early Buddhism and the idealism of the later Yogacara School. 

The Buddha taught that there was no such thing as a soul (the doctrine of anatta) but rather a loose grouping of ever-changing skandhas or personality elements.   Nagarjuna went further by saying that anything at all, objects or existents of any kind, were in a similar way "a loose collection of pulsating, transitory elements."  These elements when closely examined, according to Nagarjuna, were no more than mental phenomenon or phantasms.  They were "empty."

In this way, the substantiality of the external world was denied.  Everything was void (sunya), i.e. things were not what they seemed to be.  In reality, they lacked the characteristics assigned to them.

The early Buddhists, being Indians, found less difficulty than others perhaps in accepting the world as a kind of magical show in which what was seen was both true and not true.  This was not to argue that what was seen was non-existent, they said, but only that we took it for what it essentially was not.

However, there was an inherent qualification in this view.  Implied was the idea of transcendental truth.  Only minds that had shed "ignorance" could apprehend it, which was to say that so long as minds and consciousnesses continued in the ordinary or usual way, they experienced only everyday or relative truth.

SUNYA

The Sanskrit word sunya means "the Void."

In India more than in any other land, numbers play a mystical role.  Such numbers include 1, 3, 7, 84, 108, etc., but of all, the number and symbol 0--zero--is the most important.  It is expressed in the concept of sunya, the Void.  Sunya, the Void, zero, is the transition point between opposites, symbolizing the true balance within divergent tendencies.  It is the All and the None, the matrix of positive and negative, of generation and destruction.  Metaphysically, 0 is nirvana, the state in which all karma--the result of ignorance--is burned out.

SIXTH PATRIARCH

The Intuitive Sects of Mahayana Buddhism are Ch'an in China and, later, Zen in Japan.  In their view, scholarly research, the reading of books, the doing of good works, the performance of rituals, and so on, are not only of little merit, but often a hindrance to true insight.  To illustrate this, there is the story of Hui-neng, an illiterate country boy, who went on to become the Sixth Patriarch of Ch'an Buddhism.

Hui-neng's first "conversion" took place while he was still a youth.  One day while he was selling firewood in the market, he heard a man reading a Sutra (Buddhist lesson).  No sooner had he heard the text of the Sutra than his mind, all of a sudden, became enlightened.  Traveling to the Tung-tsen monastery, he was received by the Fifth Patriarch who asked him where he came from and what he expected to get from him.  Hui-neng replied that he was a commoner from Sun-chow and said that he asked for nothing but Buddhahood.

The boy was then sent to the granary of the monastery, where for many months he worked as a laborer, hulling rice.  One day the Patriarch assembled his monks and, after reminding them of the uselessness of merit as compared to liberation, told them to go and "seek the transcendental wisdom within your minds and write me a stanza about it.  He who gets the clearest idea of what Mind-Essence is, will receive the insignia and become the Sixth Patriarch."

Shin-shau, the most learned of the monks and the man who everyone expected to become the Sixth Patriarch, was the only one to do as the Abbot commanded.  "Our body may be compared to a Bodhi tree," he composed, "while our mind is a mirror bright.  Carefully we cleanse and watch them hour by hour, and suffer no dust to collect upon them."

But the Fifth Patriarch told him to go back and try again.  Two days later Hui-neng heard someone recite the stanza, knew immediately that its author had not achieved enlightenment and himself dictated to someone who knew how to write, the following:  "By no means is Bodhi (from the root "budh,"meaning to awaken) a kind of tree, nor is the bright reflecting mind a case of mirrors.  Since mind is Emptiness, where can the dust collect?"

That night the Patriarch summoned the youth to his cell and secretly invested him with the insignia.  Naturally, Hui-neng's fellow monks were jealous, and many years passed before he was widely recognized as the Sixth Patriarch.  He became renowned.

WORDS AS POINTERS

Much emphasis is placed in our culture on the value of printed and spoken words for conveying truths.  Unfortunately, these words are taken literally at times, as if truth itself.  Words are not truth, but they can point to truth.

We often ANALYZE words as though they, again, are the truth.  What is the real meaning of this or that word?  Let's go into this more deeply, we say.  But like the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle puts it, analyzing the pointers is pointless. The pointers are not the point.

TURIYA

Turiya, according to Vedanta, is not a state of consciousness but consciousness itself.  It is the consciousness of the Atman.  It is a witnessing consciousness of which the individual is normally not aware.  The three usual states of consciousness, that is, the state of waking (jagrata), the state of dreaming (svapna), and the state of dreamless sleep (susupti) have turiya underlying and transcending them.