The Long ConversationA timeline of world philosophy

Philosopher

Vasubandhu

fl. 350–450 CE

Buddhist philosopher whose Treasury of the Abhidharma became a standard handbook, and whose later works argue that the world we experience is “mere cognition”.

Photograph of a lifelike wooden statue of a monk with one hand raised
Unkei, wooden statue, about 1208, an imagined likeness made some eight centuries after his lifetime. Kōfukuji temple, Nara. Photograph published 1952.Photo: Shihachi Fujimoto · Public domain · See the original

Vasubandhu lived in the fourth or fifth century CE, under the Gupta empire, and made his mark on three Buddhist scholastic traditions in turn. His Commentary on the Treasury of the Abhidharma, an analysis of experience into its momentary constituents, is still the main source for non-Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy in Tibetan and East Asian Buddhism.

Traditionally said to have been won over to the Mahāyāna by his half-brother Asaṅga, he became a founder of Yogācāra. In his Twenty Verses and Thirty Verses he argued that the world we experience is “mere cognition”: appearances in consciousness rather than independently existing external objects.

Key ideas

Appearance only (vijñaptimātra)
“Everything in the three realms is only appearance.” There are no external things, only minds and mental states. Our experience of the world is like the hairs seen by someone with an eye disease: an experience of something that doesn’t exist as it appears.
Against external objects
A perceived object would have to be built from partless atoms or be a partless extended whole. Vasubandhu argued that neither is coherent, so external objects must be unreal appearances.
Momentariness
Nothing can change and remain itself, and everything is impermanent, so everything lasts only a moment. Vasubandhu added that things must destroy themselves, because destruction can’t be caused.
No single creator
Vasubandhu argued against Īśvara, a God who is the sovereign creator of all things. Living beings arise from many conditions, not from a single cause of the whole world.
Tradition
Indian
Region
India
Schools
Yogācāra
Themes
The self

Influences

Influenced by

Vasubandhufl. 350–450 CE

Influenced

Influenced by

Vasubandhufl. 350–450 CE

Influenced

Key works

  • Commentary on the Treasury of the Abhidharma (Abhidharmakośabhāṣya)
  • Twenty Verses (Viṃśikā)
  • Thirty Verses (Triṃśikā)

Sources

  1. Jonathan C. Gold, Vasubandhu, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy