{"id":9299,"date":"2023-12-30T21:03:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-30T21:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dhammadipa.cz\/cs\/?post_type=other-authors&#038;p=9299"},"modified":"2026-05-26T17:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T17:04:11","slug":"making-sense-of-mind-only","status":"publish","type":"other-authors","link":"https:\/\/dhammadipa.cz\/en\/other-authors\/making-sense-of-mind-only\/","title":{"rendered":"Making sense of mind only"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dhammadipa.cz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Making-Sense-of-Mind-Only-.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9300\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Why Yog\u0101c\u0101ra Buddhism Matters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mah\u0101y\u0101na Buddhism arose in classical India and flourished in China, Tibet, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. While one of its major Indian schools, the Middle Way (<em>Madhyamaka<\/em>) focuses on the concept of emptiness\u2014that all phenomena lack their own essence\u2014the Yoga Practitioners school (<em>Yog\u0101c\u0101ra<\/em>) focuses on the cognitive processes whereby we impute such essences. Through everyday examples and analogues in cognitive science, author William Waldron makes Yog\u0101c\u0101ra\u2019s core teachings\u2014the three turnings of the Dharma-wheel, the three-nature theory, the store-house consciousness, and the idea of mere perception\u2014accessible to a general audience. Countering the common view of Yog\u0101c\u0101ra as a form of idealism, he treats Yog\u0101c\u0101ra Buddhism as a coherent system of ideas and practices <em>on its own terms<\/em>, with dependent arising its guiding principle. He first examines early Buddhist texts that show how our affective and cognitive processes shape the way objects and worlds appear to us, and how we erroneously grasp onto them as essentially real\u2014perpetuating the engrained habits that bind us to <em>sa\u1e43s\u0101ra<\/em>. After analyzing the early Madhyamaka critique of essences, he then examines how Yog\u0101c\u0101ra texts, such as the <em>Sa\u1e43dhinirmocana S\u016btra<\/em> and <em>Stages of Yogic Practice,<\/em> build upon these earlier ideas to argue that our constructive processes also occur unconsciously. Not only are we collectively, yet mostly unknowingly, constructing our shared realities\u2014our cultural worlds\u2014they are also mediated through the store-house consciousness (<em>\u0101laya-vij\u00f1\u0101na<\/em>)\u2014functioning as a kind of \u201ccultural unconscious.\u201d Next, Vasubandhu\u2019s <em>Twenty Verses<\/em> argues that we can learn to recognize such objects and worlds <em>as<\/em> \u201cmere perceptions\u201d (<em>vij\u00f1\u0101pti-m\u0101tra<\/em>) and thereby abandon our enchantment with the products of our own cognitive processes. The author walks us through the Mah\u0101y\u0101na path to this transformation as gracefully laid out in Maitreya\u2019s <em>Distinguishing Phenomena from their Ultimate Nature<\/em>. Finally, he considers how Yog\u0101c\u0101ra perspectives inspire us to rethink religion in our scientific and pluralistic age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Book<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/wisdomexperience.org\/product\/making-sense-of-mind-only\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/wisdomexperience.org\/product\/making-sense-of-mind-only\/<\/a><br><strong>SoundCloud<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/rangjung-yeshe-institute\/prof-bill-waldron-making-sense-of-mind-only\">https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/rangjung-yeshe-institute\/prof-bill-waldron-making-sense-of-mind-only<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11655,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"post_media":[325],"language":[105],"place":[],"topic":[376],"text_authors":[44],"class_list":["post-9299","other-authors","type-other-authors","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","post_media-text","language-english","topic-yogacara","text_authors-bill-waldron"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dhammadipa.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/other-authors\/9299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dhammadipa.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/other-authors"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dhammadipa.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/other-authors"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dhammadipa.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dhammadipa.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dhammadipa.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_media","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dhammadipa.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_media?post=9299"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dhammadipa.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=9299"},{"taxonomy":"place","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dhammadipa.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/place?post=9299"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dhammadipa.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=9299"},{"taxonomy":"text_authors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dhammadipa.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/text_authors?post=9299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}