The Mahayana Schools of Thought
Category: Buddhist Path | Mind Trainer Articles | Recent Meditation Posts
In Buddhism, philosophy matters
Let’s explore the two philosophical schools of Mahayana thought: Madhyamaka and Yogacara, also known as Cittamatra. People are often drawn to Buddhist meditation and contemplative practices because they help us develop important personal qualities and become better people, and because they lead us to suffer less and be able to help others suffer less. Delving into the finer points of philosophy, we may think, is beside the point.
It can be helpful to understand that in a Buddhist context, when we talk about schools of philosophy, these are specific ways of understanding and thinking about reality; ways of considering how we think and generate knowledge. This is important because it is through incorrectly perceiving reality that we suffer.
Our misperception causes us to continue to plant seeds of suffering and experience the pain that results, which is why our understanding of what reality is and isn’t matters so much. Exploring Buddhist schools of thought isn’t some sort of arcane philosophical conversation like debating the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. There are many philosophical concepts that people can argue about and that won’t impact anyone’s life. But Buddhist philosophy is different: it impacts our lives. It informs how we are in the world, how we think about ourselves, how we generate knowledge, and how we construct and interact with reality.
There are, generally speaking, four main Buddhist philosophical schools. Each school provides a complete picture, a complete way of questioning reality and phenomena from its own point of view. What is truly real? How can we know anything about it? How do we learn to perceive correctly?
Madhyamaka and Cittamatra, the two Mahayana ways of knowing, build on the two ways of knowing associated with foundational or early Buddhist schools. The four schools are often presented as if they were ranked from lowest to highest. Though the people who do the ranking seem to always put Madhyamaka at the top, this doesn’t mean that we can dispense with all the other schools and only follow Madhyamaka. It’s not like that. Each way of thinking is appropriate for different times in our practice. Each is appropriate for a particular approach to reality, in its own setting, and within its own method of describing things. Each is the right fit in the right context.
I think it’s important to not dismiss any schools of Buddhist thought. If one of them is a better fit for you, go with it. Don’t feel that there’s a problem if Cittamatra is a better fit for the experiences you’re having in meditation than Madhyamaka. We’re not being trained to believe a specific doctrine. We are being given tools to think critically, clearly, and systematically, and to support us in our practice and in our lives in general.
The Cittamatra School
Citta is a Sanskrit word that means mind, matra means only or exclusively, so Cittamatra is translated as the Mind-Only School. This tends to be the way that a certain system of thought and approach to reality has been characterized, although in my opinion, it is a bit reductionist. Cittamatra is the name that was given to the school of thought that is also very widely known as the Yogacara.
Yoga is a word that many of us are familiar with and tend to associate with postural yoga practices. Yoga actually means union—it comes from the Sanskrit verbal root yuj, which means to yoke or bring together, in the way that oxen or horses can be yoked together. In a practice context, whether in Buddhist, Hindu, or any other type of contemplative system, it’s about uniting things. In this sense, every type of practice is yoga—it’s not just postural. In the context of sitting still on a cushion, we’re uniting many things: we’re uniting our concentration with our body, our concentration with our breath, our body with our breath. All of these are ways of thinking about yoga, which in fact simply translates as practice.
Cara is an engagement on a path. And so Yogacara is the path of the practitioners—it’s the meditators’ school. This doesn’t mean that people who follow other schools of Buddhist philosophy aren’t meditators—they are. What is particular here is that the Yogacara system of thought describes reality from a meditator’s point of view, from within the experience of those whose main emphasis is meditation.
The way the mind, its nature, and the nature of reality are described in the Yogacara system of thought arises from an intensive practice context such as retreat. Yogacara is based on a particular understanding of how the mind is structured and how it works. Because it asks us to engage with all objects of perception as mental objects, it is also called the Mind-Only school.
In the context of meditation, suppose you’re practicing and there arises the memory of a very vivid interaction with someone you’ve had problems with and all kinds of emotions are cropping up. In the moment, on your cushion, you’re not actually interacting with that other person. There’s no altercation—it’s just you and your mind—yet there are emotions. And so, in that sense, it is mind only. Yogacara is not claiming that there is no phenomenal reality, no source of experience. It’s really about what we are working with in our practice: the mind and perception.
Yogacara provides us with a systematic description of the mind. There are the six senses that relate to the external world: eyes, ears, nose, the tongue for taste, the body for proprioception and touch, and the aspect of mind that coordinates the information which the other sense organs have harvested from the world around us, as well as mental objects such as thoughts, dreams, feelings and the like.
Underlying it all is the alaya, the storehouse consciousness, a deep source of awareness that is like a container for karmic seeds. Alaya is where experience is stored at a very deep level. And then there’s another consciousness—usually referred to as the seventh, the bridge between the alaya and the senses—whose only role, in short, is to focus on your alaya consciousness and be convinced that that is your ego, your real self. Because of this function, it is sometimes referred to as the afflicted consciousness. Thus the six senses, along with the seventh consciousness, the bridge, and the eighth, alaya, constitute the eight consciousnesses of this school. Whether you call it Yogacara or Cittamatra, this philosophical school presents a very advanced and beautiful way of analyzing mind and mental activity that is very effective when you’re working directly with your mind.
The Madhyamaka School
Now let’s look at the Madhyamaka School. Madhyama means middle, and the Madhyamaka is the Middle Way School. Right from the start, the Buddha taught about finding and practicing the middle path, that is, a path between extremes. He spoke of the futility of lifestyle extremes such as indulgence and asceticism, and also of extreme views, such as thinking, “this absolutely is the case” or “that absolutely is not the case,” and the importance of finding a middle path between such extremes.
In the Madhyamaka school, the middle path is not just about views or opinions. It’s about exploring the very deeply held beliefs that inform how reality affects us and how we mistakenly see ourselves and the world as either truly existent or truly non-existent. The Madhyamaka school cuts a beautiful path between these two extreme views. It presents us with a systematic way of approaching our experience and our reality—if we are able to distinguish these—and trains us to find the flaws in the way we think about everything. It encourages us to constantly analyze the presuppositions that have led to the experience we’re having right now.
The Madhyamaka school of thought is an amazing way of training ourselves to question our expectations of and beliefs about reality, others, and ourselves. It’s an incredible method of analyzing and critiquing our presuppositions about and interactions with “reality” and the really weird and harmful solidified, crystallized beliefs that we develop about it—assumptions that cause us and others so much harm.
The schools and the bodhisattva journey
Both of these schools of thought belong to Mahayana Buddhism. Both incorporate compassion and wisdom. They draw on similar sets of practices and ideals concerning practice and the Bodhisattva path, and they are very helpful and useful in different types of settings. An important distinction between them is that on the Yogacara side, there is a strong emphasis on the mind being possessed of its own qualities. We use terms such as luminosity, wisdom, and compassion to express the fact that mind brings its own qualities to every moment of awareness. Describing the nature of mind as luminosity and brilliance is how Yogacara expresses the experiences that may arise from our meditation practice.
Madhyamaka is much more concerned with emptiness or negation: don’t fixate, don’t label. Anytime you label something or name it, you are giving it an identity, and identity is always going to be flawed. This school of thought is particularly focused on not crystallizing anything, as in, not believing in its realness or substantiality. Belief in the realness of phenomena, thoughts, and situations is, ultimately, a mistaken view that will always result in an incorrect view of reality and in suffering.
Both schools emphasize critical thinking and going beyond concepts; both require deep reflection through meditation practice in order to see the true nature of mind. Madhyamaka focuses on the scraping away of misconceptions, while Yogacara emphasizes the qualities of mind when such confusion is removed. We can incorporate both into our study and practice. I hope you will be inspired to dive further into these amazingly profound and vital schools of Mahayana thought.
