There have been several attempts of late to read Yogācāra through the lens of Western phenomenology. I approach the issue through a reading of the Cheng weishi lun, a seventh-century Chinese compilation that preserves the voices of multiple Indian commentators on Vasubandhu’s Triṃśikāvijñaptikārikā. Specifically, I focus on the “five omnipresent mental factors” and the “four aspects” of cognition. These two topics seem ripe, at least on the surface, for phenomenological analysis, particularly as the latter topic includes a discussion of “self-awareness”. (...) Yet we find that the Cheng weishi lun account has little in common with the tradition associated with Husserl and his heirs. The categories and modes of analysis in the Cheng weishi lun do not emerge from or aver to a systematic reflection on the nature of “lived experience” so much as they are focused on subliminal processes and metaphysical entities that belong to the domain of the noumenal. In my conclusion I suggest that the later pramāṇa tradition associated with Dignāga and Dharmakīrti—a tradition that profoundly influenced later Yogācāra exegesis in Tibet—did indeed take a “phenomenological turn.” But my comparison shows that both traditions falter when it comes to relating conceptual content to non-conceptual experience, and thus there is reason to be skeptical about claims that phenomenology is epistemologically grounded in how the world presents itself first-personally. (shrink)

This essay aims to show that the fourfold division theory of consciousness in the Cheng Weishi Lun 成唯識論 is the third way between phenomenology and the higher-order theories of consciousness. Regarding the problem of infinite regress, in particular, this theory represents an alternative between the reflexive model and the reflective model of self-consciousness. The main purpose of this essay is not to prove or to argue for the theory, but to clearly present its structure and the systematic or Abhidharmic way (...) of thinking that leads to the notion of awareness of self-awareness and provides a way out of the problem of infinite regress. It also points out some pertinent issues that need to be further addressed or explored, such as simultaneous causation, begging the question, reconciling the antireflexivity principle with the lamp simile for self-awareness, and aboutness. (shrink)