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Yogācārabhūmi-Śāstra

Mahayana Buddhist treatise

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History

The Yogācārabhūmi is generally associated with the Indian Yogācāra school because it contains certain unique Yogācāra doctrines, like the eight consciousnesses and the ālaya-vijñāna (storehouse or foundational consciousness). According to Ulrich Timme Kragh, "its overall objective seems to be to present a coherent structure of Buddhist yoga practice with the Mahāyāna path of the bodhisattva placed at the pinnacle of the system", but substantial parts also deal with non-Mahāyāna "mainstream" practices. The text also shows strong affinity to the Abhidharma works of the Mainstream Buddhist Sarvāstivāda school, adopting many of its technical terminology and classifications of phenomena (dharmas).

While it likely contains earlier materials, the YBh is thought to have reached its final redaction in the fourth century CE. Traditional sources name either the Indian thinker Asaṅga (ca. 300–350) or the bodhisattva Maitreya as author, but most modern scholars hold that it is a composite text with different chronological textual layers and various authors, though this does not rule out the possibility that Asaṅga was among them.

According to scholars such as Changhwan Park and Robert Kritzer the YBh may have subtly influenced other North Indian Buddhist works such as the Abhidharmakośa and the works of the Sautrāntika school. The YBh also exherted a strong influence on the later works of the Yogācāra-Vijñānavāda school, such as the Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra, the Abhidharma-samuccaya and the Mahāyānasaṃgraha. Finally, the YBh also exherted a clear influence on the tantric tradition of Indian Buddhism of the sixth to fourteenth centuries (and the works of exegetes like Ratnākaraśānti), and the YBh is itself aware of the use of mantras and subjugation rituals that would become common to the tantric tradition.

The YBh was studied and transmitted in East Asian Buddhist and Tibetan Buddhist translations. In China, it was the work of Xuánzàng (玄奘, 602?-664) that introduced the YBh in full. It caused many debates, particularly around the notion that certain beings did not have the gotra, or spiritual disposition, to attain awakening. By the end of the Sui dynasty (589–618), Buddhism within China had developed many distinct schools and traditions. In the words of Dan Lusthaus:

[ Xuanzang ] came to the conclusion that the many disputes and interpretational conflicts permeating Chinese Buddhism were the result of the unavailability of crucial texts in Chinese translation. In particular, he [Xuanzang] thought that a complete version of the Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra (Yuqielun, 瑜伽論), an encyclopedic description of the stages of the Yogācāra path to Buddhahood written by Asaṅga, would resolve all the conflicts. In the sixth century an Indian missionary named Paramārtha (another major translator) had made a partial translation of it. Xuanzang resolved to procure the full text in India and introduce it to China.

The YBh was translated into Tibetan in the ninth century at Samye by Ye shes sde and Cog ro Klu'i rgyal mtshan working with the Indian paṇḍitas Prajñāvarman, Surendrabodhi, and Jinamitra. The YBh remained influential in these traditions (for example, it is a major source of meditation instruction for Tsongkhapa's Lamrimchenmo), however, perhaps because of size and complexity, it was eventually abandoned in monastic seminaries.

Besides the Chinese and Tibetan translations which survive in full, at least 50% of the text survives in nine extant Sanskrit fragments. A translation project is currently underway to translate the entirety of Xuánzàng's version into English. It is being carried out by the Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai society and the Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research. The Bodhisattva-bhūmi, a subsection of the work which is also treated as a stand-alone text, has been translated into English by Artemus Engle and is part of the Tsadra series published by Shambhala Publications.

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