At the risk of labouring the point, we should note that for the Yogacarin
it is not the case that we simply `imagine' our experiences. They are
`real' to the extent that they are `given' without our conscious
intervention. The pure given-ness (vastu-matra) of our experiences is thus
beyond our conscious control. The question of `externality,' however, is
prevented from entering the Yogacara account since it is a quality which
cannot be a veridical aspect of our experience (since if x is really
external to our consciousness then it cannot be within its perceptive
range). There may or may not be an external world beyond our perception,
but this will have nothing to do with our actual experience which can only
be `internal' and subjective. Such, according to the Yogacarin, is the
nature of conscious experience. Attachment to the objects of experience
(alambana) as if they were independent and external to the subject is the
primary cause of the perpetuation of one's cognition of samsara. Ignorance
and attachment (based upon past karman) thereby cause the bifurcation of
consciousness into subjective and internal and objective and external. This
is the `myth of the transcendent object'--that is the fallacious belief
that one is having a veridical experience of an external world; the myth
(maya) under which all unenlightened beings are labouring.

In the final analysis one can say that the main philosophical difference
between Vasubandhu qua Sautrantika (as exemplified in the
Abhidharma-kosa-bhasya) and Vasubandhu qua Yogacarin (as exemplified in
many Mahayana works) is that in the former case the inference from
experience to external cause (nimitta) is accepted, whilst in the latter
this is seen to be logically unestablished (asiddha), a source of suffering
(dukha) and delusion, and philosophically superfluous.

The Yogacara Path and the Abhidharma of Non-Mahayana Schools

As stated at the outset of this paper, the context of Mahayana philosophy
in India was provided by the Abhidharma conceptual framework and modus
operandi. This is not to say that the Mahayana had no critical responses to
make to established Abhidharma theories, only that the context remained
unquestionably Abhidharmic in both form and orientation [26].

Mahayana attitudes towards the Abhidharma of the Hmayana schools can be
determined if we consider Mahayana conceptions of the Buddhist path
(marga). The cultivation of the practice of yoga in the emerging Yogacara
school leads at its highest levels to the cessation of the notions of
`subject' and `object' (i.e. prapanca). The meditative path is hierarchical
and progressive and each new stage involves the renunciation or cessation
(nirodha) of what came before. From a Mahayana perspective this eventually
came to mean that the Abhidharma analysis of the Hmayana schools remains
appropriate for as long as one is proceeding along the mundane path
(laukika) but that it should be relinquished once one enters the
supramundane (lokottara) stages of the path. To rid oneself of the
obscurations of knowledge (jneyavarana) as well as the obscurations of
afflictions (klesavarana) that are overcome on the mundane (i.e.
non-Mahayana) path, some of the techniques, doctrines and concepts of the
Hinayana Abhidharma must eventually be relinquished. Equally, progress in
yogic practice and the Mahayana path (marga) eventually leads to a
cessation of notions of an `objective' dimension to experience since this
type of realism is deemed inappropriate as soon as one realises
`object-less concentrations' (niralambana samadhi). Progression along the
path leads to an increasingly analytical scrutiny (prajna) of the images or
representations (vijnapu) which occur in samadhi. This is the realisation
of vijnaptimatrata in the meditative sphere--namely that that which is
manifested (vijnapti) in perception is merely an image (akara) and not an
independently-existing object. Finally, even these images (akara) must be
relinquished as one realises the full import of sunyata and
dharma-nairatyma. This final step amounts to the realisation that all
dharmas are the same (sama), quiescent (santa) and indistinguishable from
one another.

The notion of a progressively deconstructive path would seem to be the
import of such verses as Trisvabhavanirdesa 36:

Through the perception that there is mind-only (citta-matra), there arises
the non-perception of knowable things, through the non-perception of
knowable things, there arise the non-perception of mind also [27].

This may prove to be a brief allusion to the progressive nature of the path
and the gradual mastery and cessation of different levels of yogic
attainment (and their concomitant conceptual frameworks). Note, for
instance, that in the same way as the Madhyamaka interpretation of
dependent-co-origination subverts the notion of a substantially originated
entity, the insight into the fact that all perceptions are representations