Theos-Talk Archives (July 2003 Message tt00020)

July 2 2003

This is an important contribution to understanding the
relationship of Theosophy to esoteric Buddhism , The
relationship includes the VOICE OF THE SILENCE .

Best wishes,

Dallas

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YOGACHÂRYA BUDDHISM


THE MYSTICISM OF YOGACHÂRYA BUDDHISM

By Radhakamal Mukerjee
======


One of the most subtle doctrines of contemplative Mysticism was
that developed by the Yogachara School of Mahayana Buddhism.
This school developed in India in the fifth century A.D. in the
hands of the two brothers of Gandhara -- Vasuvandhu and Asanga --
who both spent part of their lives in Oudh. The great
characteristic of this Buddhist school of thought is that by the
methods of dialectic a doctrine was reached in which pure
knowledge and mystical ecstasy became inseparable.

H.P. Blavatsky points out in her THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY that:

“There are two Yogacharya Schools, one esoteric, the other
popular. The doctrines of the latter were compiled and glossed
by Asamgha in the sixth century of our era, and his mystic
tantras and mantras, his formularies, litanies, spells and
mudras, would certainly, if attempted without a Guru, serve
rather purposes of sorcery and black magic than real Yoga.”

Again she says,

“Aryasangha was the Founder of the first Yogacharya School. This
Arhat, a direct disciple of Gautama, the Buddha, is most
unaccountably mixed up and confounded with a personage of the
same name, who is said to have lived in Ayodhya (Oude) about the
fifth or sixth century of our era, and taught Tantrika worship
in
addition to the Yogacharya system. Those who sought to make it
popular, claimed that he was the same Aryasangha, that had been
a
follower of Sakyamuni, and that he was 1,000 years old. Internal
evidence alone is sufficient to show that the works written by
him and translated about the year 600 of our era, works full of
Tantra worship, ritualism and tenets followed now considerably
by
the "red-cap" sects in Sikkim, Bhutan, and Little Tibet, cannot
be the same as the lofty system of the early Yogacharya school
of
pure Buddhism which is neither northern nor southern, but
absolutely esoteric. 

Though none of the genuine Yogacharya books
(the NARJOL CHODPA) have ever been made public or marketable,
yet
one finds in the YOGACHARYA BUHMI SHASTRA of the
pseudo-Aryasangha a great deal from the older system, into the
tenets of which he may have been initiated. It is, however, so
mixed up with Sivaism and Tantrika magic and superstitions, that
the work defeats its own end, notwithstanding its remarkable
dialectical subtlety.”

According to this idealistic school, all objects are created by
the mind itself. It is the pure idea that is produced as an
external object. Says Vasuvandhu:

“ It is knowledge itself that appears as object; all this is only
idea that appears as object, which in Reality does not exist.”

The analogy is drawn from the perception of a picture for denying
the objective value of knowledge.

“ In a picture painted according to the rules there are neither
hollow nor raised parts, and yet one seizes them; thus in the
imagination there is never duality and yet one seizes it.”

Thus in Yogachara all duality in the phenomenon of representation
is banished. There no longer exists either apprehender or
apprehended, as Asanga says, nor the ego and the world. There
remains only a cosmic absolute Vijnana or knowledge that is an
infinite ever-fluent series. All objects in the universe, all
mental constructs, all differentiation of subject and object,
consist of the Alaya-Vijnana, the absolute Cosmic Consciousness.

In THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE, Alaya is defined as "the Universal
Soul or Atma, each man having a ray of it in him and being
supposed to be able to identify himself with and to merge himself
into it."

There is here an essential similarity with the Atmadvaita of
Sankara. Yet there is also the strong distinctive characteristic
of the Buddhist Vijnanadvaita that pure knowledge which is
anterior to the subject and object and the act of knowledge is
only Becoming. Writes Houan-Tsang:

“As the river struck by the winds gives birth to waves without
its
flow being interrupted, so the Alaya-Vijnana, without a break in
its perpetual flux, produces temporary thoughts . . . From all
time, the Alaya-Vijnana flows thus like a river without
interruption.”

When all notions of diversification of the knower, known and
knowledge are banished as fictitious, when the subject and the
object become only aspects of Vijnana or knowledge itself, there
is discovered in the end beneath the phenomena or rather in them
the Suchness.

The conception of the Suchness or Absolute Nature of things
(Tathata) is one of the most delicate and profound mystical
notions in the Buddhist philosophy. The Suchness eludes all
definition, and thus as in the Upanishads the Reality is sought
to be defined by an accumulation and balancing of opposite
categories, so also does the Vijnanabadi try to reach an
approximation of Absolute Nature by effacing the distinction
between Being and Not Being, Ideality and Reality, Samsara and
Nirvana.

In fact, the Tathata can be apprehended only by a mystical
rapport. It is only in mystical insight that the human being can
pass beyond the distinctions of the ego and the world, beyond all
mental constructs. The Suchness is the strangest, simplest, and
boldest definition of Reality. It defines the indefinable and
inexpressible. It does not lead the mind to any void, because it
is something positive. On the other hand, in an absolutist
idealism that is in ceaseless Becoming, the Suchness is the
permanent, all-comprehensive datum. Only by mystical
illumination could this Suchness be apprehended.

Dharmapala observed that the Suchness is a mere tentative
description adopted only to save one from the error of
identifying it with nothingness. Thus the predicate Bhava or
Existence is pointed. Asanga says of the Suchness:

“It can neither be called existence nor non-existence; It is
neither "such" nor "otherwise." It is neither born nor
destroyed;
It neither increases nor decreases; It is neither purity nor
faith. Such is the real lakshana (mark) of the Transcendental
Truth (Suchness).”

The same idea that the true state of Suchness in only born of
mystical illumination when all language or meaning of language is
completely abjured is also evident in Asvaghosa's definition of
Suchness:

“As soon as you grasp that, when totality (universality) of
existence is spoken of or thought of, there is neither that
which
speaks, nor that which is spoken of; neither that which thinks,
nor that which is thought of; then you conform to Suchness; and
when your subjectivity is thus completely obliterated, it is
then
that you may be said to have insight.”

It is a familiar experience in the path of mystical insight that
the Reality is reached through a gradual but completed negation
of all attributes and conditions, which betoken relativity and
individuality. In the Upanishadic mysticism, the Reality is
reached through a process of elevated contemplation, which avoids
all relativities and subjectivities as neti, neti (not this, not
this). It is the other; and this negation becomes the
description of the Reality itself.

Unlike any other contemplative mysticism, the Yogachara school
has developed elaborate modes of contemplation in stages and
parts leading up to the transcendent Suchness. This is described
by them as Asamskrita dharma and ought to have its appeal to
modern minds. The stages of consciousness that lead up to
absence of all conditions, i.e., the Samskritas, which like spots
bedim the pure bright mirror of Reality are:

(1) The freedom of akasa, all-comprehensive, limitless
unchangeable.

(2) Freedom from all kinds of bodily conditions and attributes
(klesas).

(3) Freedom of effortlessness which is obtained without the aid
of Knowledge.

(4) Freedom from the motivation of pain and pleasure.

(5) Freedom from the activation of conscious processes.

Such are the stages in the development of mystical insight in its
highest reaches, each stage representing a distinct manifestation
of Reality. At the final, the sixth stage, freedom in the
eternal, unchangeable, and transcendent Suchness is established.

In the Upanishadic mysticism, however, the stress is on
affirmation. The Reality, though likewise absolute,
unconditioned, and indefinable, has a positive aspect as
something eternal and immutable and completely comprising all
things that live, move and disappear into it. In the Upanishadic
description of Reality, the affirmative note dominates over the
negative note, which is stronger in Buddhist mysticism though in
both the dual attitudes exist side by side. As a matter of fact
even in Asvaghosa, the Suchness is conceived in its two aspects:
first trueness as negation (Sunyata) and secondly, trueness as
affirmation (Asunyata). Much more significant than this is the
difference between Upanishadic and Yogachara mysticism arising in
the latter's idea of Reality as a process, a ceaseless Becoming,
a continuous series, akin to the phenomenological tendency of
modern thought.

The Suchness is the message of Silence, the essence of effortless
contemplation. Here thought and vacuation, affirmation and
negation are both baffled. For the transcendent can be neither
posited nor denied. Truth transcends both the affirmation and
the negation of thought.

The mystical height is at once sublime and terrifying. For it
cuts the roots of our flow of life and knowledge. Yet when it is
reached by rare, adventurous souls, it is found as the inmost of
our being and becoming, embracing every being and every thing in
the world in one simultaneous all-comprehensive illumination and
compassion.


by Radhakamal Mukerjee

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DTB


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