Description
Book SynopsisThis is the story of fifth century CE India, when the Yogacarin Buddhists tested the awareness of unawareness, and became aware of human unawareness to an extraordinary degree. They not only explicitly differentiated this dimension of mental processes from conscious cognitive processes, but also offered reasoned arguments on behalf of this dimension of mind. This is the concept of the 'Buddhist unconscious', which arose just as philosophical discourse in other circles was fiercely debating the limits of conscious awareness, and these ideas in turn had developed as a systematisation of teachings from the Buddha himself. For us in the twenty-first century, these teachings connect in fascinating ways to the Western conceptions of the 'cognitive unconscious' which have been elaborated in the work of Jung and Freud.
This important study reveals how the Buddhist unconscious illuminates and draws out aspects of current western thinking on the unconscious mind. One of the most intriguin
Trade Review
'This work weaves together into one fabric yards spanning some one thousand years of Indian Buddhist thought, and will prove to be an invaluable source of information for scholars of Buddhist literature.' - East and West Series
Table of ContentsPart I - The Background and Context of the Ãlaya-vijñãna Part II - The Abhidharma Context 15. The Abhidharma Project and its Problematic Part III - The Alaya-vijñana in the Yogacara Tradition, The Alaya-vijñana in the Early Tradition Part IV - The Alaya-Vijñana in the Mahayana-samgraha I : Bringing It All Back HomePart V - The Alaya-Vijñana in the Mahayana-samgraha II: Looking Beyond
