Vasubandhu

Vasubandhu

Vasubandhu was an Indian Buddhist philosopher who made significant contributions to the clarification and development of the Indian Buddhist schools of philosophy traditionally classified as the Vaibhaóika (or Sarvastivada), the Sautrantika, and the Yogacara (or Cittamatra).

Erich Frauwallner argued, on the basis of a study of Vasubandhu’s biographers, Paramartha, Buston and Taranatha, that there were two Vasubandhus, one who composed Yogacara works and lived in the fourth century CE, and another who lived in the fifth century CE and composed treatises from the Vaibhaóika and Sautrantika points of view.

But later studies disputed Frauwallner’s argument and advanced the hypothesis that there was only one author of these works and that he lived in the fourth century CE According to Buddhist tradition, Vasubandhu was at first an orthodox follower of the Vaibhaóika school, and, after having allied himself with the Sautrantika school, was convinced by his half-brother, Asaña, to accept the Mahayana scriptures (which were not accepted by the Vaibhaóikas or Sautrantikas) and to adopt the theses of the Yogacara school.

Vaibhaóika philosophy

Vasubandhu’s Contributions to the Vaibhasika and Sautrantika Philosophies

Vasubandhu’s contribution to the Vaibhaóika philosophy is his masterly treatise the Abhidharmakosa (Treasury of knowledge). In this work he sets out in verse theses held in most of the Vaibhaóika schools.

One of the most fundamental of these theses is that what truly exists (that is, what exists apart from being conceived) is a substantially real permanent or impermanent phenomenon (dharma) or a collection of substantially real impermanent phenomena that is by convention conceived as a single entity of a certain kind.

The treatise as a whole explains the world of conventional phenomena in terms of how its underlying substantially real phenomena are caused to combine and separate to perpetuate our rebirth and suffering and how, by eliminating their causes, our rebirth and suffering can be eliminated.

Atmavadapratióedha

To this work Vasubandhu added a prose treatise, the Atmavadapratióedha (Refutation of the theory of a self). In it he defends the theory of persons of the Vaibhaóikas, who believe that we, as persons conceived from the first-person singular perspective, suffer and are reborn because we misapprehend ourselves as selves in the sense of being substantially real phenomena. We can become free from rebirth and suffering by realizing that we are not substantially real phenomena.

Nonetheless, he believes, we ultimately exist insofar as we are the collections of substantially real impermanent aggregates (skandhas) of which our bodies and mental states are composed; only these aggregates are found, by direct perception and correct inference, to be the phenomena on the basis upon which we conceive ourselves as persons.

Vasubandhu then presents objections to the theories of persons held in the unorthodox Vaibhaóika school called the Vatsiputriya and in the Hindu school called the Vaiseóika. According to the Vatsiputriyas, we ultimately exist without being collections of such phenomena, and according to the Vaiseóikas, we ultimately exist as permanent and partless substantially real phenomena.

Vatsiputriyas

Vasubandhu claims that the Vatsiputriyas’ arguments for their theory are inconsistent with other theses they should, as Vaibhaóikas, accept, and argues that their theory, like that of the Vaiseóikas, has the absurd consequence that we are completely different from, and so causally unrelated to, our aggregates.

In reply to the objections of the Vatsiputriyas and Vaiseóikas—that the Vaibhaóika theory of persons implies that we are not the same over time, do not possess mental states, and so on— Vasubandhu explains how, in spite of our reducibility to collections of impermanent aggregates, we are said to be the same over time, to possess mental states, and so on.

Vasubandhu also briefly rejects the thesis of Nagarjuna, the founder of the Madhyamika school of Indian Buddhist philosophy, that nothing is substantially real, which, he believes, implies that we do not ultimately exist at all, since we could not in that case be reducible in existence to collections of substantially real phenomena.

Sautrantika school

Vasubandhu’s most important contribution to the development of the Sautrantika school was the Abhidharmakosabhaóya (Commentary on the treasury of knowledge), a prose commentary on the verses in the Abhidharmakosa. In this work he adopts the Sautrantika project of correcting the ontological excesses of the Vaibhaóika school by showing that they are not supported by Buddhist scriptures.

Although Vasubandhu accepts the Vaibhaóika thesis that what exists is either a substantially real phenomenon or a collection of substantially real impermanent phenomena, he argues that the Vaibhaóikas introduce more substantially real phenomena than are needed in order to explain how suffering and rebirth arise and are eliminated.

For instance, he rejects the Vaibhaóika explanation of how substantially real phenomena that have occurred in the past or will occur in the future can be apprehended if they do not ultimately exist at the time they are being apprehended.

real phenomena

Their explanation is that substantially real phenomena ultimately exist in the past, present, and future insofar as they possess a real nature (svabhava) by virtue of which they can be identified by themselves; they are said to be past phenomena when they have already exercised their characteristic causal power, to be present phenomena when they are exercising it, and to be future phenomena when they have not yet exercised it.

Vasubandhu’s basic objection to this explanation is that it unnecessarily introduces into their basic ontology past and future substantially real phenomena, because it is possible to apprehend substantially real phenomena that have ceased to exist and have not yet come to exist.

Among the many other theses of the Vaibhaóikas he rejects are the theses:

basic objection

1. that there can be a cause that is simultaneous with or can follow its effect (he claims that a cause must always precede its effect),
2. that a future result of an action must occur in the same person who performed the action because there is present in the continuum of the person’s aggregates of body and mind a separate substantially real phenomenon that causes the retention of the seed the action produces in the same causal continuum (he claims that the retention of the seed is due to the causal relationship between the phenomena in the continuum), and
3. that an impermanent phenomenon can exist for more than an instant (he believes that an impermanent phenomenon by nature ceases to exist as soon as it arises).

It may have been during his Sautrantika period (though some scholars think it was when he had already become a follower of the Yogacara movement) that Vasubandhu wrote a number of treatises on logic in which he presents revisions and clarifications of forms of argument used by Indian philosophers in debate.

Dignaga

In the Vadavidhi (The way of argument), part of which has survived, Vasubandhu anticipates some of the views of the Buddhist logician Dignaga, a circumstance that perhaps explains why he is sometimes said to be one of Dignaga’s teachers.

Vasubandhu’s Contributions to Yogacara Philosophy

One of Vasubandhu’s earliest contributions to the clarification and development of Yogacara thought may be the Pañcaskandhakaprakaraña (A treatise on the five aggregates), which is an attempt to improve upon Asaña’s account of the five aggregates in the Abhidharmasammucaya (Compendium of knowledge).

In the Karmasiddhaprakaraña (A treatise on the establishment of Karma), Vasubandhu argues that the workings of the law of actions and their results are not correctly explained by the orthodox Vaibhaóikas or by the Vatsiputriyas and that the law’s explanation requires reference to the Yogacara theory that there is, apart from the six types of consciousnesses that are associated with the six types of organs of cognition, a storehouse consciousness (alayavijñana) that carries the seeds of all experiences and that this consciousness is not the substantially real self that we misapprehend it to be.

Trisvabhavanirdesa

In the Trimsikakarikavrtti (Thirty verse treatise) and the Trisvabhavanirdesa (Teaching on the three natures), Vasubandhu explains how consciousness functions in terms of its three natures. He argues that persons and other phenomena are just ever-changing manifestations of consciousness, which is itself a beginningless sequence of momentary mental states that takes three different forms.

Its most basic form is that of the storehouse consciousness, which is a beginningless sequence of mental states in which is stored the seeds that are produced by actions and give rise to their results.

In dependence upon this sequence as an underlying support, it takes the forms of the afflicted mind (kliótamanas), which is a sequence of minds that misapprehend the first sequence as a substantially real self, and of a sequence of six organ-dependent cognitions of objects. All three of these ever-changing forms of consciousness, Vasubandhu adds, are mental constructions and are to be eliminated on the path to Buddhahood.

three natures

The conceptual framework Vasubandhu uses to explain how mental constructions can cease to exist is that consciousness possesses three natures (svabhavas). They are its nature of being dependent upon causes and conditions (paratantra), its nature of falsely appearing to be divided into a mind that grasps an object and an object that is grasped by it (parikalpita), and its thoroughly established nature (pariniópannasvabhava) of not in fact being divisible into a mind that grasps an object and an object that is grasped by it.

To become free from mental constructions and the rebirth and suffering they occasion, we need to realize in what way consciousness, in relation to its possession of these three natures, is without a nature (nihsvabhavata).

In relation to consciousness possessing the nature of appearing to be divided into a mind that grasps an object and an object that is grasped by it, consciousness is by its own nature without such a nature. In relation to consciousness possessing the nature of being dependent upon causes and conditions, consciousness is without a nature by virtue of which it could come to be by itself.

In relation

In relation to consciousness possessing a thoroughly established nature, consciousness is without a nature by virtue of which it is divisible into a mind that grasps an object and an object that is grasped by it. To become free of rebirth and suffering and become a Buddha, Vasubandhu explains, we need to enter into a state of consciousness that is free from all mental constructions.

In Vasubandhu’s Vimsatikakarikavrtti (Twenty verse treatise) and his own commentary on it, he answers objections to the central theses of the Yogacara philosophy.

He says that the things we believe to exist apart from mind (that is, the things we believe to be external objects) are mere mental constructions (vijñaptimatra), because what does not exist apart from mind appears, because of the constructive activity of mind, to exist apart from mind, just as what does not exist apart from sight appears, because of an eye disorder, to exist apart from sight.

external objects

In reply to the objection that if there are no external objects, perceptions cannot be distinguished from one another and the same objects cannot be perceived by different persons, he argues that perceptions in dreams differ from one another in spite of lacking external objects as causes and that many different persons perceive the same objects as a result of similar actions performed in the past.

He also argues that the suffering that is experienced by beings in the hell realms is not produced by external objects, because otherwise the hell-guardians, who are said in scripture not to suffer in these realms, would suffer along with those reborn in those realms.

Madhyantavibhagabhaóya

He adds that there can be no atoms of which external objects are composed, since they could not possess different sides as parts and so could not occupy space and be combined to compose external objects, which are said to occupy space.

Vasubandhu also composed many commentaries on Yogacara treatises and Mahayana scriptures. Important among those that have survived (either in Sanskrit or in Tibetan or Chinese) are the Madhyantavibhagabhaóya (Commentary on the separation of the middle from the extremes), the Mahayanasutralamkarabhaóya (Commentary on the ornament of the Mahayana Sutras), the Mahayanasamgrahabhaóya (Commentary on the compendium of Mahayana), and the Dharmadharmatavibhagavrtti (Commentary on the distinction between phenomena and their true nature).

distinction between phenomena