Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

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Tao
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Re: Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

Post by Tao »

>There are some masters in Vasubadhu's school, who take the extra step and reject an external world completely. They are known as >false-aspectarian yogacārins. Ratnakāraśanti is the main scholar representing this sub-school. In any case, you need also to read this:

> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind ... dhism/#6.4

Thank you I will read about him as soon as possible and see what his answers are...

For the moderador, my point was that NO master at all rejected the existence of external objects (never!) because that will make the whole Mahayana path an error, and while I might be wrong, that is of course an answer for Gelugpas and Tsongkhapa too. So I feel it inside the topic. Anyway, here I stop at your request.

Thank you and best wishes.
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Re: Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

Post by Malcolm »

Tao wrote: Mon Aug 29, 2022 3:13 pm For the moderador, my point was that NO master at all rejected the existence of external objects...
Yes, there are some yogacāra masters that do, for example, Ratnakāraśanti. This is well known to those who study Buddhist tenet systems. What they do not reject is other minds, even though they completely reject an external world.

Yogacāra is complicated, it has several positions itself.
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Re: Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

Post by Tao »

Many thanks Malcolm, I will investigate.

Now I will stop on respect to the modertor. :anjali:
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Re: Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

Post by Ayu »

Malcolm wrote: Mon Aug 29, 2022 2:05 pm
Ayu wrote: Mon Aug 29, 2022 1:59 pm Well, just let me hint to the fact that this topic (within the Gelug section) is neither about Kant nor Vasubandhu. It"s about Tsongkhapa's explanation.
Which depends on Vasubandhu, because how can he ignore the second most important yogacāra scholar?
I thought Vasubandhu (Abidharma) was Shravakayana? While Tsongkhapa talks about Prasangika Madhyamaka?

If you're talking about another Vasubandhu or a Prasangika work of him, I 'm sorry.
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Re: Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

Post by Archie2009 »

Ayu wrote: Tue Aug 30, 2022 9:38 am
Malcolm wrote: Mon Aug 29, 2022 2:05 pm
Ayu wrote: Mon Aug 29, 2022 1:59 pm Well, just let me hint to the fact that this topic (within the Gelug section) is neither about Kant nor Vasubandhu. It"s about Tsongkhapa's explanation.
Which depends on Vasubandhu, because how can he ignore the second most important yogacāra scholar?
I thought Vasubandhu (Abidharma) was Shravakayana? While Tsongkhapa talks about Prasangika Madhyamaka?

If you're talking about another Vasubandhu or a Prasangika work of him, I 'm sorry.
Vasubandhu is supposed to have converted to the Mahāyāna. Austrian Erich Frauwallner had a two Vasubandhu hypothesis, but the man was also a Nazi (since 1932).
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Re: Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

Post by Kai lord »

Vasubandhu is widely recognised as one of the patriarchs and bodhisattvas of the pure land and zen/chan sect. There are even some Chinese records of him attaining the "heat or warmth" stage in the path of preparation after reading one of the five works from Maitreya

In fact, among Chinese or Eastern Buddhist schools, there have been no discussion about the possibility of two Vasubandhus. Like Asanga, they recognised just one with that name.

However, both of them did have a lesser known brother who was an Arhat. Perhaps some people confused him for Vasubandhu.
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Re: Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

Post by wei wu wei »


Please! It is exactly about "the external pot", i.e. about external objects. Tsong Khapa felt that he had the right to adopt different views according to the situation and write within the view that he had chosen. Interestingly we find this same attitude in the Ancient Rome, where for example Cicero tells in the beginning of his article that he is writing within the Stoic viewpoint.

You can also look at the Gelug Refuge Tree or the Gelug Refuge Assembly, in a which we find both the Chittamatra/Yogachara and Madhyamaka lineages:
OP seems to have wanted to contrast a Mind-Only type view with one that asserts the external world, if only conventionally. It may be helpful for them to know that there are Gelug readings of Cittamatra and Yogacara and that Tsongkhapa--like all preeminent masters--could articulate/inhabit other tenet systems, but I wouldn't say Tsongkhapa is the first name people think of when they're talking about Cittamatra or Yogacara.
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Re: Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

Post by ItsRaining »

Tao wrote: Mon Aug 29, 2022 1:53 pm The text seems to rebate your words:

>But not all idealists are Hegelian, absolute idealists. Among idealisms, Vasubandhu’s is more closely aligned with Kant’s, in that both assert that the objects of our experience are only representations, while both also affirm the reality of unknowable things in themselves.

I agree with Vasubandhu and the writer

And that's is not idealism at all, Kant wasnt idealist at all, as affirms the reality of the external, but unknowable (I agree)

But their effects are here, and that's the conditioned nature of the yogacarins.
The article does not articulate the mainstream view of Yogacara, which is that all objects and reality are based in mind. “Things in themselves” in Yogacara are just bijas and their manifestations. These are based in the Alaya-Vijnana and hence not apart from mind.

The idealism of Vasubandhu is pretty clearly presented in his twenty verses, it would be hard to deny the fact he rejected anything being apart from mind.
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Re: Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

Post by futerko »

Tsongkhapa's strong rejection of Yogācāra idealism leads him to assert the existence of external objects (the third point). His (discredited) Yogācāra school, based on either the works of Asaṅga or the Epistemologists, explains the absence of subject-object bifurcation as non-dual with thought or mind (Sk. citta). Realizing this in a non-conceptual, meditational state constitutes a liberating vision. Ultimately, therefore, external objects are projections of a deluded mind. Tsongkhapa rejects this, though he suggests only those who have understood the emptiness of inherent existence through reflecting on the natural workings of dependent origination can set it aside. As he says in his Ocean of Reasoning,

“The meaning of the statement that the conventional designation of subject and objects stops is that the designation of these two stops from the perspective of meditative equipoise, but it does not mean that the insight in meditative equipoise and the ultimate truth are rejected as subject and object. This is because their being subject and object is not posited from the perspective of analytic insight, but from the perspective of conventional understanding” (Garfield and Samten 2006, p. 26).

From the perspective of ordinary convention there are external objects, so it is sufficient, on that level, to assert that they are there.

[...]

Finally, Tsongkhapa has a robust explanation of the difference between true and false on the covering or conventional level. He denies any difference between a false object (a dream lottery ticket, for example) and a real one; as appearances, he asserts, both are equally false, only convention decides which is true. All phenomena equally lack truth. In Tsongkhapa's mature philosophy, therefore, all appearance is false––to appear is to appear as being truly what the appearance is of, and the principle of dependent origination precludes such truth from according with the way things actually are.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tsongkhapa/


Put simply, contra the argument that obscurations by their very nature are primordially unconditioned, Tsonghkhapa is saying that they are nonetheless a sign of causal entanglement and therefore an indicator of a teleology at the conventional level.
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Re: Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

Post by Aemilius »

Lankavatara sutra and/or Cittamatra doesn't say that there are no external beings or external objects that are produced from their own causes. It only says that we do not see them, what we see are imaginary objects (parikalpita svabhava).

"The Alaya-ocean is constantly stirred by the winds of objectivity", Lankavatara sutra, Chapter two, IX, verse 100.

Tsongkhapa and later gelugpas have produced advanced explanations of the Chittamatra view too, at least this is what Alex Berzin tells us:
"Types of Phenomena and Existence: Gelug Chittamatra" https://studybuddhism.com/en/advanced-s ... hittamatra
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Re: Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

Post by Tao »

Aemilius wrote: Sun Sep 18, 2022 1:26 pm Lankavatara sutra and/or Cittamatra doesn't say that there are no external beings or external objects that are produced from their own causes. It only says that we do not see them, what we see are imaginary objects (parikalpita svabhava).

"The Alaya-ocean is constantly stirred by the winds of objectivity", Lankavatara sutra, Chapter two, IX, verse 100.

Tsongkhapa and later gelugpas have produced advanced explanations of the Chittamatra view too, at least this is what Alex Berzin tells us:
"Types of Phenomena and Existence: Gelug Chittamatra" https://studybuddhism.com/en/advanced-s ... hittamatra
Agree.

In fact, Yogacara has the "dependent nature" (see The three natures) which implies something (apart from mind) to depend on...

All phenomena is mind, all knowledge is mind. But there is the dependent nature of both (phenomena and knowledge) which is not mind. Be it noumena or other...

I will read the text linked, thnak you.
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Re: Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

Post by Malcolm »

Tao wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 3:03 pm
Aemilius wrote: Sun Sep 18, 2022 1:26 pm Lankavatara sutra and/or Cittamatra doesn't say that there are no external beings or external objects that are produced from their own causes. It only says that we do not see them, what we see are imaginary objects (parikalpita svabhava).

"The Alaya-ocean is constantly stirred by the winds of objectivity", Lankavatara sutra, Chapter two, IX, verse 100.

Tsongkhapa and later gelugpas have produced advanced explanations of the Chittamatra view too, at least this is what Alex Berzin tells us:
"Types of Phenomena and Existence: Gelug Chittamatra" https://studybuddhism.com/en/advanced-s ... hittamatra
Agree.

In fact, Yogacara has the "dependent nature" (see The three natures) which implies something (apart from mind) to depend on...

All phenomena is mind, all knowledge is mind. But there is the dependent nature of both (phenomena and knowledge) which is not mind. Be it noumena or other...

I will read the text linked, thnak you.
This is an error. The dependent nature refers to the all-basis consciousness.
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Re: Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

Post by Aemilius »

Malcolm wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 3:17 pm
Tao wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 3:03 pm
Aemilius wrote: Sun Sep 18, 2022 1:26 pm Lankavatara sutra and/or Cittamatra doesn't say that there are no external beings or external objects that are produced from their own causes. It only says that we do not see them, what we see are imaginary objects (parikalpita svabhava).

"The Alaya-ocean is constantly stirred by the winds of objectivity", Lankavatara sutra, Chapter two, IX, verse 100.

Tsongkhapa and later gelugpas have produced advanced explanations of the Chittamatra view too, at least this is what Alex Berzin tells us:
"Types of Phenomena and Existence: Gelug Chittamatra" https://studybuddhism.com/en/advanced-s ... hittamatra
Agree.

In fact, Yogacara has the "dependent nature" (see The three natures) which implies something (apart from mind) to depend on...

All phenomena is mind, all knowledge is mind. But there is the dependent nature of both (phenomena and knowledge) which is not mind. Be it noumena or other...

I will read the text linked, thnak you.
This is an error. The dependent nature refers to the all-basis consciousness.
I don't think that is true. Usually it is explained that dependent nature (paratantra) refers to how things and beings arise depedent on causes and conditions. Like a tree grows dependent on seed, soil, sunlight, moisture and air.

Calling it a "tree" is imaginary nature (parikalpita), which is dependent on your learning and memory. "Tree" is a concept stored in your repository consciousness (alaya-vijnana).
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Re: Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

Post by PadmaVonSamba »

This excellent podcast station called Lam Rim Tibetan Internet Radio
http://lamrim.com/
frequently airs a recording of HH Dalai Lama giving a teaching on this very topic.
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Re: Tsongkhapa on Yogacara and the existence of external objects?

Post by thubten_palmo »

Lethemyr wrote: Mon Jan 03, 2022 9:58 pm

I've heard that Tsongkhapa was not opposed to the Yogacara system of thought, but that he rejected any interpretation of it that would deny the existence of the conventional world. Of course, no fair reading of the Yogacara texts would lead to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a real world, but I have always been a pretty big fan of interpretations which suggest that our conventional reality is incredibly different from ultimate reality. Vasubandhu's dream analogy comes to mind. It seems unclear from the surface level things I've read on Tsongkhapa whether he subscribed to that view, that conventional reality is just a projection of the mind but there is still a material world in ultimate reality, or whether he affirmed that the conventional world we perceive is really as it seems, just without svabhava applied to it.

Of course, I'm willing to hear him out on whatever point he tries to make, but I think he'd be fighting a pretty uphill battle to challenge the great Yogacara thinkers!

So what was Tsongkhapa's view on external objects? Did he think they were:

1) Existent, but in a form very different to what we perceive generally, to the extent that reality as we experience it can be called a projection of the mind.

2) Existent, in a form nearly identical to what we perceive, not mentioning the ascription of svabhava of course.

3) Something else?

A premature thanks to anyone who can help and apologies if I'm grossly misunderstanding something. I can't claim to be a scholar.


My understanding of Je Tsongkhapa's view on conventional reality is that he taught that all conventional things lack inherent existence and "merely exist" as imputations, in name only. He also taught that we should leave the conventional world "as is" and just refer to things by their conventional name for the sake of communicating with others. He taught that the conventional appearances remind us of the emptiness of the appearing object and that the appearing object and its emptiness are one not two, but one entity. Je Tsongkhapa's view of emptiness is very profound and I may be over-simplifying things here. But this is just my understanding of it. Also, Yogacara school is not rejected in Gelug and is actually very instrumental in Tantra practice. Meditations on the correct view of emptiness co-joined with qualified Tantra practice should be able to clarify a lot of what Je Tsongkhapa taught.
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