Asanga
Buddhist · South Asia · 300 to 370
Indian Buddhist teacher who built the mind-only view into a full system, with a deep store of the mind below ordinary thought.
What it is
Asanga was an Indian Buddhist monk and philosopher, one of the founders of the Yogacara school, the Buddhist school that puts the mind first. He lived in the fourth or fifth century CE, and the sources differ on which, so no exact years are given here.
He is remembered with his brother Vasubandhu as one of the two thinkers who laid the school's foundations. Born, in some accounts, in Purushapura, the modern city of Peshawar, in a Brahman family, he began as a monk in an earlier Buddhist school and then turned to the Mahayana, the broader movement he is counted among.
The main ideas
- Mind first. The school is called the consciousness doctrine, and also the doctrine of awareness only or mere representation. The idea is that the sensible world depends for its nature on being known by a mind.
- The store. Below ordinary thought lies the alaya-vijnana, a storehouse of consciousness. It holds the traces of past actions and the potentialities of future ones.
- Stages of the path. The tradition set out the stages of the Mahayana path to liberation, and Asanga is linked with the bodhisattva path.
What it looks like in practice
Imagine someone who notices that they flinch every time a certain voice is raised, though nothing is happening now. In this vocabulary, an old action or experience left a trace in the store, and it ripens as the flinch. The practice is to see that, and to let the trace be seen without feeding it. This is an illustration of the vocabulary, not a method taken from his writing.
Books and moments
- Compendium of the Mahayana. The Mahayanasamgraha is his major work, a systematic account of the school's teaching.
- Abhidharmasamuccaya. A compendium of the main categories of Abhidharma, the Buddhist analysis of experience.
- The Yogacarabhumi. Tradition ascribes this large work to him, though most scholars treat it as a compilation put together over time.
- A brother and a teacher. He is credited with winning over his brother Vasubandhu, and with learning from a teacher named Maitreya.
Questions and criticism
- Who was Maitreya? Tradition identifies him with the future Buddha, while modern scholarship has treated him as a historical figure. It is open whether he was a human teacher or a figure met in meditation.
- Which earlier school? Accounts differ on which school he first belonged to.
- What did he write? Many works are attributed to him or to Maitreya through him, but scholars question several of the attributions.
- How far does mind-only go? If perceptions arise from the store, it is fair to ask whether the school denies the outside world or only the need to explain perception by it.
Close neighbours
The page on the Buddha is the place to start for the tradition he belongs to.
Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.
Who they connect to
Influenced
- Vasubandhu · Tradition says he turned his younger half-brother toward the mind-only teaching.
Other Buddhist thinkers
- Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) · 480 to 400 BCE
- Nagarjuna · 150 to 250
- Vasubandhu · 350 to 430
- Dignaga · 480 to 540
- Candrakirti · 600 to 650
- Dharmakirti · 600 to 660
- Wonhyo · 617 to 686