AAR 1999 Panel Report

Seminar on the Study of Yogacara Buddhism (A95)

By Joe Wilson, University of North Carolina at Wilmington

[Fair warning: Sanskrit diacritics have been ignored.]
Yogacara Seminar Web site: http://www.uncwil.edu/p&r/yogacara/
Co-chairs: Joe Wilson and Charles Muller

Members of the Seminar in Attendance: Joe Wilson [University of North Carolina at Wilmington], Charles Muller [Toyo Gakuen University (Japan)], Collett Cox [University of Washington], John Dunne [University of Wisconsin - Madison], Dan Lusthaus [Florida State University], John Y. Cha [Gustavus Adolphus College], David Eckel [Boston University], Jeffrey Hopkins [University of Virginia], Matthew Kapstein [University of Chicago] , Leslie Kawamura [University of Calgary], John Keenan [Middlebury College], Chen-kuo Lin [Cheng Chi University (Taiwan)], Sara McClintock [Harvard University], John Powers [Australian National University], Robert Thurman [Columbia University], Tom Tillemans [Universite de Lausanne (Switzerland)], William Waldron [Middlebury College].

Several new members have been inducted since the Boston meeting.

          It is the custom that AAR seminars pre-circulate papers for discussion prior to the meeting, and then discuss them at the meeting. This was the second meeting of the seminar (which will meet for another three years). At our first meeting papers were posted in advance to our web site and formal responses were given at the annual meeting.
          This year the seminar tried an experiment: to take a brief Yogacara text with a focused topic and let that serve as the basis for discussion. The text we chose at the 1998 business meeting of the seminar at the AAR was Vasubandhu's Trisvabhavanirdesa (TSN), a text extant in Sanskrit and in two Tibetan translations (one of them attributed to Nagarjuna), with a number of available English translations [for details, please see our web site].
          The seminar began with a set of three issues from the TSN identified by Dan Lusthaus (see http://www.uncwil.edu/p&r/yogacara/TSN/Lusthaus10.html). The group focused primarily on a discussion of the use of the term khyati which, in various forms, is used throughout the TSN. Among the topics brought up were the use of the term in the Brahmasutrabhasya in the sense of erroneous knowledge, its use in the Yogasutras, whether or not standard dictionary definitions of the term were relevant in explicating its technical usage in the TSN, and the possibility of examining its use as a technical term in aesthetics by Bhartrhari.
          The focus of the conversation then expanded to include terms such as vikalpa and to whether or not these terms referred to pre-linguistic knowledge or not, leading ultimately to a consideration of the epistemological/logical tradition within Yogacara (the Dignaga/Dharmakirti side). The use of khyati in the Mahayanasutralamkara was invoked, and texts as late as the Tattvasamgraha were brought up.
          This led to one of the perennially reoccurring discussions in this seminar, articulated by one participant as the tacit mistaken assumption that there is a homogenous school called Yogacara. Among related topics were the assertion of a distinction between Yogacara and Vijnanavada by some Tibetans, whether we should speak of an Asanga-Yogacara, a Vasubandhu-Yogacara and so on, Bhavaviveka's role in categorizing Yogacara was also discussed.
          The seminar concluded with an exuberant ex tempore translation from the Sanskrit of the 21st through 30th verse by John Dunne, with comparison to the Tibetan texts by Leslie Kawamura, and parsing of the compounds and text from around the table. The meaning of the term vyavahara and the role of paratantra were addressed, as well as the term akrti (Tibetan rnam pa).

Several members of the seminar noted to me afterwards that it is rare indeed -- even at an academic conference -- to be able to get together with a group of specialists and have as detailed and fruitful a discussion of a text as we had in Boston.

          At the business meeting of the seminar a number of viable topics for future years were suggested. The steering committee, based on a consensus of the seminar members, opted to expand the topic introduced in the TSN, that of trisvabhava (three natures), inviting papers for the year 2000 meeting on that topic from all traditions and from all texts dealing with Yogacara, not excluding the Yogacara logicians. Papers are encouraged from all members of the seminar, of any length - from brief notes, to essays, to full length papers.