Ben Connelly, A Practitioner’s Guide, Inside Vasubandhu’s Yogacara. Available on Amazon. For details click HERE
This is an extremely helpful work concerning the challenging ideas on “Consciousness Only”, by Vasubandhu, the brother of Asanga. One of the goals of this text is to present it in the practical light of everyday living. It seeks to demonstrate how the use of these ideas as a way of practice, through practical application, occurs in the Yogacara school. The idea of Compassion is seamlessly woven into and along with all the ideas as an integral element throughout. It is a very helpful book for anyone trying to familiarize themselves with the ideas of “consciousness only” and apply them practically in everyday life and experience.
The author presents to us the 30 verses of the conscious only text. He then mindfully walks us through the ideas regarding the 8-fold conscious model, upon which the consciousness only school of thought are built. These include Alaya-vijnana or the store house consciousness comprised of Dharmas and karmic seeds, Manas, as the I formative consciousness, and the six consciousnesses related to the Mind as thought, and the 5 related sense consciousnesses. All throughout the presentation of ideas we are given concrete, current day, relevant examples of how to see, integrate, and use these ideas in today’s world, despite its modern challenges. Since the ideas, similar to Patanjali’s Yoga Aphorisms or Sutras, relates to consciousness and the “Mind”, and we operate continuously on interpretations of sensory presented data allegedly representative of the “outside” world, we cannot go wrong with a deepening understanding of the habits which drive the way our minds typically perceive, conclude and react. We even get insights into the constructed sense of self, or I versus other, which also is seen as a gross misinterpretation of actual sensory data and mental interpretations. As one reads, one gets a better sense of how such misinterpretation arises, becomes habitual, and can have a direct effect on the furtherance of suffering, strife, anger, and a host of other negative emotions.
The idea of the five aggregates and five universal factors, in relation to the Abhidharma text are discussed, along with other mental factors. Cultivating insight into these, their operations and impact are shown to provide a basis upon which calm, tranquility, and spontaneous flow or action can come about to contribute towards a more stress-free day.
Consciousness, thought, thinking, emotion and feelings, along with karma, and the “Three natures” are presented towards the second portion of the work. This helps to acquire a fuller appreciation of the depth and application of these ideas, through practice, to alleviate, if not work towards lessening the sufferings of life. In a kind of paradoxical way, dependence of events and existence, versus the idea of reality, are looked at, and yet later seen to be one thing, the same, yet apparently different, and the reasoning and causes related to “Thinking or conceptualized” identified as contributing to this misrepresentation.
Verses 28, 29 and 30 concerning “Being at Rest”, “Transformation at the Root of Suffering” and the “Blissful Body of Liberation” bring us back to simple “Mindfulness”. A mindfulness of the reality and moment we are in, which should be appreciated, but perhaps done so, non-conceptually.
Simple yet profound, this is a work that will reward its reader with a greater appreciation, and deepening understandings concerning the relative or dependent reality we spend most of our thoughts in and on. It also helps point one towards a deeper reality and existence, appreciable here and now, while simultaneously accepting life as it is. As such, it is definitely a valuable read and gains more value when applied and its implications realized.
This edition of Notable Books was compiled by Eugene Jennings.
