Selfhood and Knowledge in Yogācāra Buddhism

           This volume gathers together six studies published in several journals, between 2013 and 2018, as individual papers. They were not conceived to form a whole but rather as independent articles. Nevertheless, in the present volume, we succeeded in grouping them into two major themes.

           The first topic the volume deals with is the apparition of the phenomenon of human individuation within the wide cosmic experience. It is approached by three of the papers. The first one investigates the apparition of the human phenomenon within the cosmic consciousness, apparition which alters the peaceful and neutral character of consciousness. Human states of awareness and their subjective contents are analyzed in the second article, while the third one deals with the relation of reciprocal dependence between the human and the cosmic phenomena.

           The second part of the volume is focused on the deconstruction of “knowledge”, as a cognitive issue, and its reinterpretation as a mere subjective experience, as a “whim” of the individual consciousness. Starting with the most basic descriptions and until its higher forms, such as metaphysics and religion, knowledge is considered as a psychological “game”, stirred not by the contact with an objective reality, but by the karmic predispositions of its subject. All cognitive activity, all cognitive categories, including “truth”, are reduced to mere psychological issues, either individual or collective. Even when they are collective, being shared by more individuals controlled by similar karmic tendencies, mental constructions cannot overcome their subjective nature and lack of cognitive value. Truth is rather a matter of “tuning” the mental constructions than one of “knowing” something.