ABSTRACT
The Yogācāra school of Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism developed in the third to fifth centuries CE and became influential in later traditions in India, Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan. It is noteworthy for its theories of the three Buddha-Bodies, the unconscious construction (ālaya-vijñāna) of our ‘shared world,’ and Cognition-Only or Mind-Only (vijñapti-mātra; citta-mātra). Yogācāra has traditionally been taken as advocating idealism, that only mind inherently exists. This chapter presents Yogācāra in its deeper historical context and argues that its cognitive theories are intended as antidotes to the problem of reification, not as idealistic ontologies.
