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Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra


The Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra (Sanskrit) or Discourse on the Stages of Yogic Practice is the encyclopaedic and definitive text of the Yogacara school of Buddhism. It is thought to have been composed in the Sanskrit language in India between 300 and 350 CE.

The complete work comprises five major sections. The first section, which is the largest, is the "main stages division" (bahubhūmika) and contains seventeen sections, each describing one of the successive seventeen levels (bāhubhūmi) which cover the entire range of mental and spiritual levels in Mahayana Buddhism.

The Chinese version also contains a Compendium of Abhidharma, missing from the Tibetan translation.

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

By the end of the Sui dynasty (589-618), Buddhism within China had developed many distinct schools and traditions. In the words of Dan Lusthaus:

[ Xuanzang ] 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 (Yuqielun, 瑜伽論), 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, Śīlabhadra taught this shastra 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 (Chinese: 弘福寺) and Dacien Monastery (Chinese: 大慈恩寺).


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