Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra, also known as
"Discourse on the Stages of Yogic Practice" is the encyclopaedic and definitive text of the Yogācāra

Yogacara

Yogācāra is an influential school of Buddhist philosophy and psychology emphasizing phenomenology and ontology through the interior lens of meditative and yogic practices. It developed within Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism in about the 4th century CE...

  school of Buddhism

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

. It is thought to have been composed in India between 300 and 350 CE.

The complete work comprises five major sections: the seventeen levels (bāhu-bhūmi) which covers the entire range of mental and spiritual levels in Buddhism according to Mahāyāna

Mahayana

Mahāyāna is one of the two main existing branches of Buddhism and a term for classification of Buddhist philosophies and practice...

; the Compendium of Definitions (viniścaya-samgraha) which discusses and explicates aspects of the bāhu-bhūmi portion; the Compendium of Exegesis (vivarana-samgraha), a manual of hermeneutical and exegetical techniques; the Compendium of Synonyms (paryāya-samgraha) defining many of the various strings of quasi-synonymical expressions found in the Agamas; the Compendium of Topics (vastu-samgraha) summarizing and explaining the key topics of each sūtra contained in the Samyukta-āgama; and the Compendium of the Vinaya (vinaya-samgraha). The Chinese version also contains a Compendium of Abhidharma

Abhidharma

Abhidharma or Abhidhamma are ancient Buddhist texts which contain detailed scholastic and scientific reworkings of doctrinal material appearing in the Buddhist Sutras, according to schematic classifications...

, missing from the Tibetan translation.

Most of the bāhu-bhūmi section which includes such seminal works as the Bodhisattva-bhūmi and the Śrāvaka-bhūmi survives in Sanskrit, but little survives from the other parts.

Chinese translation

By the closure of the Sui Dynasty

Sui Dynasty

The Sui Dynasty was a powerful, but short-lived Imperial Chinese dynasty. Preceded by the Southern and Northern Dynasties, it ended nearly four centuries of division between rival regimes. It was followed by the Tang Dynasty....

 (589-618), Buddhism within China had developed many distinct schools and traditions. Xuanzang

Xuanzang

Xuanzang was a famous Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveler, and translator who described the interaction between China and India in the early Tang period...

, in the words of Dan Lusthaus

Dan Lusthaus

Dan Lusthaus, a graduate of Temple University's Department of Religion, is a specialist in Yogācāra Buddhism. The author of several articles and books on the topic, Lusthaus has taught at UCLA, Florida State University, the University of Missouri, and in the Spring of 2005 he was a professor at...

:

...came to the conclusion that the many disputes and interpretational conflicts permeating Chinese Buddhism were the result of the unavailability of crucial texts in Chinese translation. In particular, he [Xuanzang] thought that a complete version of the Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra, an encyclopedic description of the stages of the Yogācāra path to Buddhahood written by Asaṅga, would resolve all the conflicts. In the sixth century an Indian missionary named Paramārtha (another major translator) had made a partial translation of it. Xuanzang resolved to procure the full text in India and introduce it to China.

The leader of Nalanda

Nalanda

Nālandā is the name of an ancient center of higher learning in Bihar, India.The site of Nalanda is located in the Indian state of Bihar, about 55 miles south east of Patna, and was a Buddhist center of learning from the fifth or sixth century CE to 1197 CE. It has been called "one of the...

 Śīlabhadra taught this sastra to Xuanzang and other audiences three times in nine or fifteen months.

The Xuanzang version consists of one hundred fascicles (juan), and was translated into Chinese between 646-648 CE at Hongfu Monastery (弘福寺) and Dacien Monastery (大慈恩寺).

Before Xuanzang version, Dharmakṣema, Gunabhadra (394-468) and Paramartha

Paramartha

Paramārtha was an Indian monk from Ujjain in central India, who is best known for his prolific Chinese translations which include Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośa...

 had translated part of it respectively.

Tibetan translation

The Tibet

Tibet

Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...

an version was done by team of Indian scholars including Jinamitra

Jinamitra

Jinamitra was an Indian pandit who travelled to Samye Monastery in Tibet at the time of Trisong Deutsen to engage in translation. Jinamitra worked with Jnanagarbha and Devacandra along with other 'translators' , upon the Nirvana Sutra ....

, Prajñāvarma, Surendrabodhi, together with the renowned Tibetan translator, Ye-shes sDe. In East Asia, authorship is attributed to Maitreya-nātha

Maitreya-natha

Maitreya-nātha is a name whose use was pioneered by Buddhist scholars Erich Frauwallner, Giuseppe Tucci, and Hakiju Ui to distinguish one of the three founders of the Yogācāra school of Buddhist philosophy, along with Asaṅga and Vasubandhu. Some scholars believe this "Maitreya" to be a historical...

, while the Tibetan tradition considers it to have been composed by Asanga

Asanga

Asaṅga was a major exponent of the Yogācāra tradition in India, also called Vijñānavāda. Traditionally, he and his half-brother Vasubandhu are regarded as the founders of this school...

, but in all probability it is the work of several writers who compiled it during the 4th century CE.

Master Nan Huai-Chin

Master Nan Huai-Chin

Nan Huai-Chin is a spiritual teacher of contemporary China. He is the most eminent student of the renowned lay Chán Buddhist teacher Yuan Huan-Xian , and he has received confirmation of his enlightenment by various masters of the Buddhist traditions. He is considered by many to be a major force...

touches on the Yogacarabhumi-sastra in his book To Realize Enlightenment.

External links

• Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (log in with userID "guest")
• Summary of the Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra, Charles Muller and Dan Lusthaus
• Chinese-Sanskrit-Tibetan Terms: Yogacarabhumi
• Indica et Buddhica - Lexica (searchable Yogācārabhūmi included) by Richard Mahoney et al.
• Yogācārabhūmi Database (Complete marked-up Chinese text with much of the available Sanskrit and some Tibetan)