A.

CHARLENE

OF

DEFENSE

ASAGA'S
Of Caless

S. MCDERMOTT

LAYA

VIJNA

Grins1 and Sundry Related Matters

'ideation only' position2 seems to be the

The nerve of the Yogcra
defense
of what is scarcely more than a bare
reiteration
and
therapeutic
mean
'What
we
by phenomenal world is merely the sum
tautology, viz.,
total of what is intended by consciousness'.
(I.e., the world is a world
The limits of the world are precisely the limits of cog
we obviously never have access to anything but our
since
nizability.) And,
of a trans-cognitional correlate (and cause) for a
existence
the
cognitions,
- at
worst,
given eidetic experience is at best a gratuitous hypothesis
for consciousness.

perhaps a self-contradictory one.3 The above 'tautology' is, in the course

of a piece of descriptive epistemological analysis underscored to counter
a stubborn endemic human tendency to assent to its contrary.
And, in support of the foregoing, the Yogcra
the following considerations.
(a) In the experiences
of the

opponents4

of dreams,

Yogcrins

concede

philosophers

marshal

reveries and hallucinations,

that

there

are

no

even

extra-mental

'objective' correlates accompanying and engendering the imagery. But

since there is no foolproof criterion for universally distinguishing genuine
etc., it
sensory phenomena from the data of dreams,5 hallucinations,
follows that veridical experiences are also not necessarily connected with
any

trans-mental

sources.

all perceptions can be shown to be relative to some

percipient subject,6 whence phenomena can be seen to be unpackable as
the modes of minding of some mind or other. Consciousness is thus the
(b) Moreover,

horizon of all things.

(c) Finally, small wonder that the 'relation'

between the phenomenal

turns out to be unintelligible.

and the trans-phenomenal (or noumenal)

The very validity of the notion of relation is restricted to the domain of
phenomena.7

What is warranted on the basis of (a), (b), and (c) is, strictly speaking,
a purely agnostic attitude towards the noumenal realm. However,
goes one step further and flatly rejects the existence of such a

Asaga

Journal

167-174.
All Rights Reserved
2 (1973)
of Indian Philosophy
1973 by D. Reidel Publishing
Company, Dordrecht-Holland

Copyright

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168

A. CHARLENE

S. MCDERMOTT

realm.8 To arrive at a categorical assertion that there is nothing but mind,

he has recourse to the evidence from meditational experiences and the
testimony of Buddhas (as recorded in, for instance, the Samdhinirmocana
stra). Furthermore, there is a pragmatic justification for going on to a
- it is more expedient so to believe, the better to leave
dogmatic idealism
off grasping.9
In the wake of the preceding purely negative critique and dismissal of
realism, an alternative theory is needed - a positive and systematic ac
counting for the variegated texture of experience with its recurring pat
have
terns, its coherence and its continuity. Since, as the Yogcrins
the
'autonomous
external
either
stands
otiose
outside
of
shown,
object'
the knower-known relationship or does not exist at all, a more promising
approach to the problem is the positing of a mental foundation from
which the everyday world derives. layavijnna, according to Asaga,
provides the only solution; it is a veritable philosophical Alice's Restau
rant, where in all one's most cherished epistemological and metaphysical
desires attain to fulfillment:
there would not be any appropriation
If there were no layavijnna,
of the locus (Tib.
len pa = Skt. srayopdna),
nor would there be the first functioning
(Tib. dang
nor the emergence
of any illuminative
po hjug pa = Skt. di-pravrtti),
clarity, nor the
seed-essence
of
(Tib. sa bon nyid = Skt. bijatva), nor any karma, nor any apprehension
the body, nor could one attain to the stage of sampatti (Tib. snyoms par hjug pa) devoid
of thought (Tib. sems med = Skt. acittika).
Nor would there by any transmission
of
vijna at the time of death (Tib. rnam par shes pa).10
gnas

Re this eighth vijna (Tib., rnam par brgyadpa), a persuasive torrent of

words purports to show why none of the five skandhas, including the
first six pravrttivijnas can provide a suitable background for the play
of everyday events.11 All this seems to me to amount to a registering of
Asaga's high bred animadversion to a catless grin. He desperately needs
a thread, an underpinning on which to hang the grins and grimaces of
experience. And while many other thinkers12 have, for similar reasons,
succumbed to substantialist13 heresies, clutching at props is rather more
unseemly for a Buddhist philosopher. Or perhaps it is merely my Mdhya
mika stomach14 - unable to digest fully the fruits of Asaga's ontological
fecundity - which leads me to judge his views so harshly. In any case,
while there may be a way of reading Asaga's system as coherent even

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ASAGA'S

DEFENSE

OF

'LAYAVIJNA'

169

while construing the Samdhinirmocanastra as of final meaning (nitrtha)15

I can only assimilate the Stra by regarding the passages descriptive of
the eighth vijna as of provisional meaning (neyrtha). I.e., if we are
mere operationalists, deploying a quasi-myth as bait for the heretics - all
well and good! Mythopoesis when recognized as such can have a great
deal of utility as a heuristic and soterial device. But if it is question of an
ontological commitment to a mental substratum, then Ngrjuna's
comments correctly characterize both relata in the cognitive relationship
qua interdependent, as fabricated of the tissue
(grahya-and-grahaka)16,
of the same dream. Asaga's own reasoning can be seen to be a two-edged
sword, which excises mental as well as material substance.
I pass in quick review over some of the details of Asaga's 'definition'
of layavijna. I.e., it is said to be autonomous, enduring, (in a sense)
non-defined,17 in close relationship with the smklesika dharmas which
perfume it, that to which manas is attached, and that in which all the
seeds (bijas)18 of the six pravrttivijnas are retained and kept from
perishing. The remainder of my remarks will be directed chiefly to an
explanation

of this last and philosophically

most intriguing function of

layavijna.
Precisely by what mechanism, then, do the transformations (parinmas)
of layavijna, as root or matrix vijna, engender the phenomenal
world ? The perennial philosophical problem of the descent from the one
to the many19 is here resolved in away that is at least superficially similar
to the Stoic solution. For the description of layavijna as big with the
seeds or potential (sakti or smarthya)20 of mutable existence immediately
calls to mind the primordial progenitive fire of Heracleitus, said, in its
Stoic adaptation, to contain the seeds or spermatikoi logoi of all things
to come.21 Further parallels with Hellenistic philosophy are not hard
to come by. For instance, the three-aspected transformational process in
Yogcra
philosophy has as its Western correspondent the dialectical
triad of stages of falling away from the One, the Neoplatonic leitmotif
that - albeit in transmogrified form - runs through the thought of the
Middle Ages. But beyond their surface resemblances, the differences
between the Western and Eastern cosmogonies being considered are far
more compelling and worthy of comment.
For one thing, there is a more positive tenor to most early Western
- a
speculations about emergence22
feeling of Spirit disporting with

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170

A. CHARLENE

S. MCDERMOTT

ordered toward the

itself, a divine play whose fruits are ideologically
Good. Not until Schopenhauer23 do we hear a major European voice
writing off the whole phenomenal world as a mere blemish attaining to
awareness

of itself as such.

Too, the Stoic spermatikoi are sempiternal, while there is some dis
agreement among the Buddhist philosophers as to whether or not the
bijas are all primitive (the opinion of Candrapla), all born from bhvan
or perfuming (as Nanda and risena maintain), or comprise a mixed
- some increate and some produced (Dharmapla's
bag
theory).24 Also,
in contrast to their Stoic counterparts, the bijas of the Yogcra theory
are said to be simultaneous with their fruits.25 And (it is emphasized),
the bijas are determinate as to their moral species, able to engender, in some
cases good, in others bad, and in still others undefined dharmas,26 where
as the nodal points of the Western theory seem to be construed as pri
marily mathematical27 (rather than ethical) prototypes.28 In the pre
nineteenth century West, there is a virtual apotheosis of the noetic as
such - rigorously predelineated conceptual structures insinuating into all
parts of the everyday world the transcendent purity of their allegedly
divine source.29 In Yogcra
Buddhism, on the contrary, there are, at
bottom, no regulae,30 no strict arithmetic patternings. Rather, the picture
is one of manas'' primordial bulimia leaving in its wake the dregs of karmic
the brunt of the endlessly recurrent and
symbiotically flowing cycle: (a) seed, (b) manifestation thereof, (c)
perfume32 (the last comprising via manas a feedback which subsequently

energies (vsans).31

Under

activates other seeds), layavijna can almost be heard to groan with an

unendurable taedium vitae. But prelapsarian purity33 reasserts itself
when praj succeeds in revealing layavijna as non-different from
tathat itself.
One final remark. That the issue of solipsism34 seems to arise in con
junction with discussions of Yogcra philosophy is merely symptomatic
of the extent to which avidy is still operative. For the very ability to raise
the question of whether there is one or a multiplicity of streams of psychic
energy itself presupposes the activation of the vsans in layavijna.
But, as we have seen above, both layavijna and its vsans ultimately
dissolve under the impact of Mdhyamika

dialectic.

The University of New Mexico

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ASAGA'S

DEFENSE

OF

'LAYAVIJNNA'

171

NOTES
1
"Well, I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice, "but a grin without a cat !
It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life." Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
2 As
well-known
in, e.g., Vasubandhu's
dictum, 'dam sarvam vijaptimt
expressed
rakam'.
3
in more technical jargon, the object-intentness
of consciousness
Expressed
(yiayata)
an autonomous
The really engaging
needn't
mind-independent
object.
presuppose
- one which we cannot now pause to consider - is why 'proofs' of the external
question
endeavor.
world continue to be a fashionable
{N.B. Chomskyean
philosophical
deep
seem to provide
a clue. See, for example,
N. Chomsky,
syntactic structures would
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, MIT Press, 1965).
4 Their, more obdurate
to be sure, insist that an external substratum
of
adversaries,
even in dream experiences,
lokavrtti
sorts is presupposed
cf., for example, Kumrila,
1906. The Nirlambanavda.
ka (transi, by G. Jha), Bibliotheca
Indica,
Calcutta,
5 A more or less standard
list of factors to be considered
is advanced
by philosophers
the presence
of voluntary
Eastern
and Western.
It includes
coherence,
continuity,
of imaginary phenomena
and its absence
in the case of veridical sen
or non-occurrence
of certain kinaesthetic
reactions.
sations, and the occurrence
6 This
driven home than in the discussion-demon
point is nowhere more charmingly
first dialogue.
Vide also Mahynasamgraha
stration of George Berkeley's
(transi, by
volume 2, pp. 4-26.
E. Lamotte),
7 See
D. Reidel Publ. Co., Dor
my An Eleventh Century Buddhist Logic of 'Exists',
drecht-Holland,
1969, especiallly
pp. 2 and 3.
8 This is what Kant would call the move from a critical to a
dogmatic idealism. Clearly,
a leap of this sort. On the contrary,
ratiocination
alone does not suffice to legitimatize
effort in the case

is all that can be known, the

any attempt to infer from the fact that what is knowable
is all that can exist, constitutes
conclusion
that what is knowable
a glaringly obvious
logical howler.
9 The same soterial
made

to understand

appear in Berkeley's
writings, mutatis mutandis. One is
that belief in material substance
must be discarded,
lest it seduce

concerns

one into atheism.

10 Kun
gzhi rnam par shes pa med (*med' is missing in the Peking
na gnas len pa mi sridpa dang.
supported by Chinese Translation)

ed., but seems

to be

dang po hjug pa mi srid pa dang.

gsal bar hjug pa mi srid pa dang.
sa bon nyid mi srid pa dang.
las mi srid pa dang.
lus kyi tshor ba mi srid pa dang.
sems med pahi snyoms par hjug pa mi srid pa dang.
rnam par shes pahi hchi hpho mi srid pa so (Peking ed., has 'pas
(Tibetan

so').

of Asaga's
entitled Viniicayasamgra
exegesis of his Yogcrabhmi
of
4.) Indeed, if there were no layavijna,
Asaga's
eloquent
catalogue
seems almost to be an exhortation
to invent one. Compare
Peking ed.,

folios

hani, 2. 3-2.
its functions

110, No. 5539 2b3a.

Asanga ticks off his desiderata
(p. 7), applies them to the other proffered candidates
for the role of backdrop,
and finds each of them, in turn, lacking in the continuity re
Vol.
11

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quired

S. MCDERMOTT

A. CHARLENE

172

of a bearer

of the seeds

(bijas)

which

engender

the phenomenal

world.

(See

also

p. 7, footnote.)
12
philosophers.
E.g. Locke, Berkeley, various Naiyyika
13 To be sure, layavijna
nor extinguished,
is not
qua not really existent, originated,
Its ontological
But the very un
status is problematic.
quite a full-fledged substance.
the conception
of layavijana
affords Asaga
"all the advantages
clarity surrounding
toil." For layavijana
does, indeed provide more cohesiveness
of the Sautrntika
intra se by the cinematographic
analysans
theory.
of the Sautrntika
see de La Valle
Poussin's
vijnajti
doctrine,
of the Vijaptimtratsiddhi,
translation
pp, 185-186.)

of theft over

honest

than is possessed
(For a critique
French
14 The allusion

is to a story told by Averroes (in his 'The Decisive

of the Connection
Between Religion
and Philosophy',

Treatise

Determining

reprinted in Hyman
in the Middle Ages, New York 1967, p. 291, about a man
and Walsh (eds.), Philosophy
of the Prophet, gave honey to a diarrhoea
patient. There
who, upon the instructions
the Prophet
increased.
In answer to the man's complaint
said,
upon the diarrhoea
"God
spoke the truth; it was the patient's stomach that lied."
15
of the issue of Asaga's
Though
space does not permit an examination
supposed
this much is
from a Yogcra
to a Mdhyamika
evolution
gnoseological
position,
the Nature

His comments
relating to the Samdhinirmocanaslra
(some of which we are now
are made in a Yogcra
frame of mind. Thus, in the present context,
scrutinizing)
Asaga himself surely would want to regard the assertion of the existence of layavijna
as of certain or final meaning.
18
Tib., gzung ba and hdzin pa, respectively.
17 Vide
of the Vijap
French translation
pp. 96-99, 120-21 of de La Valle Poussin's

clear.

is thus far reminiscent

of Plato's
"the
The characterization
space,
of
of becoming."
Cf. Timaeus (54), an avowedly
account
mythological
of the phenomenal
world.
the coming-into-being
18 These
from Sautrntika
sources and modified
bijas or virtualities are appropriated
timtratsiddhi.

nurse

or womb

Because
of its episodic
flickerings, the sextet of vijnas consisting
by the Yogcrins.
is inadequate
to account for the seeming
of the five outer perceptions
phis manovijna
continuity of experience.
I.e., cihi phyir mam par shes pah i tshogs drug po dag gcig gi sa
bon nyid gcig yin par mi srid ce na hdi Itar dge bahi mjug thogs su mi dge ba dang mi dge
bah i mjug thogs su dge ba dang gnyi gahi mjug thogs su lung du ma bstan pa dang khams
ngan pahi mjug thogs su khams bar ma dang khams ngan pahi mjug thogs su khams bzang
rten pahi mjug thogs su hjig rten las hdas pa dang hjig rten las hdas pahi
po pa dang...hjig
mjug thogs su hjig rten pahi sems hbyung la de dag ni da Itar sa bon nyid du mi rung bahi
phyir dang sems kyi rgyud y un ring por rgyun chad kyang y un ring pos hbyung bar hgyur
bas dehi pfiyir yang mi rung ngo.
folios of Asaga's
exegesis of his Yogcrabhmi,
3, line 8; 4, lines 1-4.) As
(Tibetan
the seventh, the janusfaced
vijna, its function is chiefly that of mediator from
to the sextet of vijnas. It is therefore a mere purveyor of a derived sense
layavijna
of continuity.
19 There
being ultimately no real descent, of course. All vijnas preceding layavijana
are parikalpita-svabhva;
is paratantra-svabhva;
and only the tathgata
layavijna

for manas,

garbha is parinispanna.
20
Calcutta
Yogcrabhmi,
See, e.g. p. 4 of Asaga's
part I (ed. by V. Bhattacharya),
"
1957.
bijsrayah."
Sarvabijakamrayopdtrvipkasamgrhitamlayavijnarfi
21 "The
of Providence
to the
original impulse
gave the origin and first momentum
cosmic
ordering of things by selecting certain germs of future existences and assigning

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ASAGA'S

DEFENSE

OF

'LAYAVIJNA'

173

of realization,
to them their productive
succession."
capacities
change, and phenomenal
this doctrine is better known in its Augustinian
(M. Aurelius to himself, ixl.) Perhaps
of the genesis of creaturely
version.
account
Augustine's
being refers to so-called
said to be implanted
'seminal reasons',
by God at creation.
22 The
underground
whispers of the Gnostics and other dualist sects admittedly cannot
and because of their influence, an undeniable
aura of pessimism carries
be overlooked;
of Western thought vis vis the subject of the coming
over even into the mainstream
into being of the world. Vide, e.g., Plotinus'
ambivalence
in this regard. He at times
imbues the process of emanation
from the One with a dark tone, alluding
to it as a
'falling away'.
23
the great drama of the will-to-live and the characterization
"Comprehending
a somewhat
true nature certainly demands
more accurate
consideration
and

of its

greater
it to the name of God...

than simply disposing of the world by attributing

thoroughness
Life by no means presents itself as a gift to be enjoyed, but as a task, a drudgery, to be
What is the ultimate aim of it all? To sustain ephemeral
worked
and
through....
harassed
individuals
through a short span of time in the most fortunate case with
endurable

want and comparative

With this evident want of proportion
painlessness....
the effort and the reward, the will-to-live, taken objectively, appears to us from
this point of view as a fool, or taken subjectively,
as a delusion.
Seized by this, every
between

that has no
living thing works with the utmost exertion of its strength for something
value."
The World as Will and Representation,
A. Schopenhauer,
Dover edition (transi,
by E. J. Payne), Vol II, pp. 356-357.
Schopenhauer
was, of course, directly inspired by
of Buddhism.
After Schopenhauer
and Kierkegaard,
even the West cannot
return to the naive optimism of the Greeks.
24 de LaValle
Poussin's
French translation
of the Vijaptimtratsiddhi,
pp. 102-108.
25
Ibid., p. 116.
26
Ibid., p. 117.
27 "The
sower, the father, the mother do not count. God is still operating and making
the seed evolve their latent forms according
to the laws of numbers."
St. Augustine,
the model

De

Civitate Dei, XXII,

24.2. Aquinas'
to the Augustinian
is that
objection
position
causes are therein deprived
of any real efficacy. The Buddhist
secondary
bija theory
escapes criticism on this score.
28 And where the ethical issue does
arise, ever since Plato there has been a tendency to
be evasive as to whether there are ethical exemplars
for the grosser or more morally
repugnant aspects of phenomenal
reality.
29 With some
trepidation I venture to observe that the much touted 'Faustian'
dynamism
- the cultural hallmark of Western man - is nowhere in
sight at this juncture. Instead
one is confronted
with an Eleatic
cosmos
of crystallized
mathematical
archetypes.
30 A
of these.
fortiori, no bnficiant Donor
31 The
it therefore seems to me, is more properly characterized
Yogcra
philosophy,
as a 'mono-boulesis'

(to use a term coined by P. Merlan, in his Monopsychism,

Mystic
Problems
and Neoplatonic
of the Soul in the Neoaristotelean
be correctly labelled
1963), if, e.g., Neoplatonism
'monopsychism'.

ism, Metaconsciousness:

Tradition, Nijhoff
32
as an instrumentalism.
Again, this is defensible if construed
If, however, it is alleged
to correspond
to 'what there is', the embarrassing
question of what counts as evidence
for vsans, etc. arises.
33 It
or fall in this case is not due to the occurrence
at
goes without saying, the 'lapse'
Buddha
nature
any point in time of a peccatum originale. Rather, the pristine atemporal
has a logical,

not a temporal,

precedence

over the root evil of grasping.

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174

A. CHARLENE

S. MCDERMOTT

34 See Y.
'Buddhist
A Free Translation
of Ratnakirti's
Sam
Kajiyama's
Solipsism.
Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies 13 (January, 1965), 435-420.
tnntaradfana\
See also T. Stcherbatsky,
Buddhist Logic II (Dover republication
of the 1930 Leningrad
edition),

p. 370. The word 'solipsism'

Western philosophical

contemporary
connotations.

Cf. W. Todd,

Analytical

is perhaps
literature,
Solipsism,

in view of its currency in

misleading
where it has quite a different set of
Nijhoff

1968.

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