A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s6.t4.260

v2.c19.s6.t4.260

Hitherto it has usually been thought that the founder of the Yogācāra school of Mahāyāna Buddhism was Asaṅga or Āryāsaṅga. It is now, however, probable that the tradition according to which several of his works are supposed to have been revealed to Asaṅga by the future Buddha Maitreya in the Tuṣita heaven, rests upon the fact that Maitreyanātha, briefly called Maitreya, was a historical personage, the teacher of Asaṅga, and the real founder of the Yogācāra school.³ This school teaches the Vijñānavāda, *i.e.* that nothing exists outside consciousness. Thus, like the Sūnyavāda, it denies the reality of the world of phenomena, but yet, in a certain sense, recognises an existence contained in thought and consciousness. The sole Absolute, however, which embraces this conciousness which in its turn includes in itself all psychic processes (ālayavijñāna), is Bodhi, the one and only truth, which is *one*, though revealed in the endless multiplicity of the Buddhas. But this Bodhi is only attainable to the Yogācāra, *i.e.* to him who practises Yoga, and even to him only in stages, after he has gone through all the ten stages (daśabhūmi) of the career of a Bodhisattva. The practice of Yoga, which, in Hīnayāna Buddhism also, plays no unimportant part,¹ is here associated systematically with Mahāyāna Buddhism.²