Yogācāra — Mind-Only, the Store-Consciousness, and the Three Natures
The idealist school of Buddhist philosophy: there is no external world independent of the consciousness that perceives it. Yogācāra's ālayavijñāna (store-consciousness) — holding all karmic seeds — is the closest Buddhist philosophy comes to a substrate consciousness, making the comparison with Advaita Vedānta's ātman/Brahman one of the most philosophically productive in Indian thought.
The mind-only thesis
Yogācāra's vijñaptimātratā — mind-only — means that what we take to be external objects are actually nothing but representations (vijñapti) arising within consciousness. The argument: if all we ever have access to are representations, and if representations are by nature mental, there is no reason to posit a non-mental world that the representations supposedly represent.
The ālayavijñāna (store-consciousness) is the substrate: a 'below-consciousness' stream that holds all karmic seeds (bījas). These seeds ripen into the representations that constitute experienced reality. Liberation is the transformation of the ālayavijñāna at its base (āśrayaparāvṛtti) — the moment when the karmic seeds no longer generate the illusion of an external world.
Foundational concepts
Key thinkers
Viṃśatikā — foundational idealist text
There is no external world — only the stream of consciousness mistaking itself for it.
Yogācārabhūmi — co-founder
Mind is the architect of all worlds.
In dialogue with
Primary sources
Viṃśatikā
Twenty verses establishing the mind-only thesis with philosophical rigour.
Mahāyānasaṃgraha
Comprehensive Yogācāra treatise covering all major philosophical topics.
Sources are drawn from indexed primary texts and traditional commentarial literature.
Related traditions