Discourse on the Perfection of Consciousness-Only
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Ten Indian commentaries on a Yogacara verse text are collated into one argued treatise, deciding between them rather than reporting them, and giving Chinese Buddhism its most technical psychology.
- ten commentaries collated into one adjudicated argument
- eight consciousnesses, including a storehouse of latent seeds
- external objects analysed as transformations of consciousness
- a technical vocabulary that outlived the school that made it
Rather than translate the commentaries separately, Xuanzang and his disciple Kuiji fused them into a single work that adjudicates disagreements, generally following Dharmapala. The doctrine holds that what we take for external objects are transformations of consciousness, and it analyses mind into eight kinds including a storehouse consciousness carrying the seeds of future experience. The technical vocabulary it fixed shaped East Asian Buddhist philosophy even where the school itself did not last.
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