VIJÑ?NAV?DA

The label Vijñ?nav?da (consciousness school) was applied to the epistemological and ontological positions of the Yog?c?ra school and the Buddhist logic tradition in the polemical debate literature of their medieval Indian opponents. These Buddhist and non-Buddhist disputants used the term vijñ?nav?da to emphasize the Yog?c?ra assertion that external objects do not exist, but consciousness does, thus inviting an idealist interpretation that these opponents (especially the realist schools, such as Ny?ya, M?m??sik?, and Sautr?ntika) refuted at great length. Aspects of Buddhist epistemology associated with the Vijñ?nav?da position include claims that parts, not wholes, are real; claims that particulars are real, not universals; the notion of momentariness; and the assertion that sense-objects (vi?aya), because they appear only within cognitive acts, are not external to the consciousness in which they appear.

The term Vijñ?nav?da was a misnomer because Yog?c?ra epistemology actually claimed that while cognitive objects (vi?aya) appearing in consciousness were real, the thing-itself (vastu)—which is singular, momentary, and causally produced—was not apprehended by ordinary perception. Yog?c?ra denies the realist claim that the perceptible object (vi?aya) has a corresponding vastu as its referent (artha), since a referent, whether perceptual or linguistic, is always a cognitive construction. However, once the consciousness stream is purified of emotional and cognitive obstructions (kle??vara?a and jñey?vara?a, respectively), a vastu can be cognized by direct, immediate cognition (jñ?na), unmediated by cognitive, conceptual overlays (prapañca, kalpan?, parikalpita). This type of cognition is called nirvikalpa (devoid of conceptual construction).

Bibliography

Shastri, D. N. The Philosophy of Ny?ya-Vai?e?ika and Its Conflict with the Buddhist Dign?ga School (Critique of Indian Realism). Reprint, New Delhi: Bharatiya Vidy? Prakashan, 1976.

Stcherbatsky, F. Theodore. Buddhist Logic (1930), 2 vols. Reprint, New York: Dover, 1962.

Dan Lusthaus