Yogacara [Skt.,=yoga practice], philosophical school of Mahayana Buddhism, also known as the Vijnanavada or Consciousness School. The founders of this school in India were Maitreya (270-350), his disciple Asanga (c.375-430), and Asanga's younger half-brother Vasubandhu (c.400-480), who was also the greatest systematizer of the Abhidharma type of Buddhist philosophy. The school held that consciousness (vijnana) is real, but its objects are constructions and unreal. The school's teachings are thus often characterized by the phrase "consciousness-only" (citta-matra) or "representation-only" (vijnapti-matra). The content of consciousness is produced not by independently existing objects but by the inner modifications of consciousness itself. A theory of eight kinds of consciousness was formed to explain how this process functions. The deepest level of consciousness is the "store-consciousness" (alaya-vijnana), which is both individual and universal and contains the seeds or traces of past actions, which are projected into manifestation through the "defiled mind" and the six sense-consciousnesses (the five physical senses plus mind or thought). The school was transmitted to China as the Fa-hsiang. It eventually syncretized with the Madhyamika school.

or Vijnanavada

Idealistic school of Mahayana Buddhism. It rejects the complete realism of Theravada Buddhism and the practical realism of the Madhyamika school, preferring a more complicated position in which the reality perceived by humans does not exist but only appears to do so by virtue of the capacity of the mind to perceive patterns of continuity and regularity. Yogacara emerged in India about the 2nd century and was introduced into China in the 7th century by Xuanzang. It was transmitted to Japan in the mid-7th century as Hossō.

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