- Lived:
- c. 300–370 CE (dates contested by up to fifty years) · born in Puruṣapura — modern Peshawar, Pakistan — in the Gandhāra region; taught across northern India
- Tradition:
- Indian Buddhist; co-founder of Yogācāra, the "yoga practice" or "mind-only" school of Mahāyāna Buddhism
- The Big Idea:
- You never meet the world raw. Every experience you have is constructed by layers of mind — and the deepest layer is a subliminal storehouse of seeds planted by everything you have ever done, ripening into how the world appears to you.
- In their words:
- "Understanding that all this is nothing but representation, one comes to see that even 'mind-only' cannot be clung to." (a plain rendering of a verse tradition he built on in the Mahāyānasaṃgraha)
- If you remember one thing:
- Twelve years of meditation showed him nothing; one act of compassion for a dying dog showed him everything. Yogācāra's claim is that its map of the mind was drawn from inside the mind — philosophy from the meditation cushion, not the armchair.