Thirty Verses on Conscious Life

The 'Thirty Verses' or 'Treatise on the Thirty Verses on No More Nor Less than Representation Only' by Vasubandhu (316 – 396), is a succinct and concentrated set of thirty verses crucial to the Yogācāra, the second branch of the Mahāyāna. Yogācāra is, next to Madhyamaka or Śūnyavāda (initiated by Nāgārjuna), one of the two schools of Mahāyāna, integrating yoga and epistemology. It became canonical and was translated into Chinese, forming the heart of the 'Treatise on the Establishment of the Doctrine of Consciousness-Only', a major 7th-century work of Xuanzang (602 – 664). In this work, the thoughts of Vasubandhu were turned into an ontological idealism, i.e. the subject constituting the object. The commentary avoids this common take on Vasubandhu and returns to his original approach : a critical and phenomenological Yogācāra (‘yoga practice’ or ‘one whose practice is yoga’), also called ‘citta-mātra’, Consciousness-Only. The text is translated from Sanskrit into English and French.