ABSTRACT
What function does the mirror model play in Yogäcära thought? We saw it used above to explain ordinary cognition. Hut Yogäcära is a soteric phenomenology, which means that it does not merely describe in order to describe. Description, for Y ogäcära, carries soteric significance. While Husserl, for instance, certainly hoped that his phenomenological method would provide benefits beyond mere description, such as giving a firm philosophical foundation to the 'groundless' European Wissenschaften, he did not go so far as to claim that description itself is intrinsically transformative, or, what would amount to its descriptive corollary, that by means of perfecting the descriptive method, that which is described, viz. consciousness, would become so radically altered that an entirely new description-perhaps even a new method-would be required. Hut Husserl's reticence in this regard is symptomatic of Western thought as a whole.1 The line between descriptive and prescriptive discourse-between describing what is and prescribing what ought to be-frequently becomes blurred in practice. Hut that blurring is never theoretically justified.2 Put in Kantian terms, the 'pure' and the 'practical' styles of reason remain largely incommensurate, while 'aesthetic' reason remains enigmatic.3
