Making Sense of Mind Only
Book • 2023
William S. Waldron's Making Sense of Mind Only presents Yogācāra as a coherent, practice-oriented system rather than mere philosophical idealism.
The book traces Yogācāra's development out of early Buddhist dependent arising and Abhidharma concerns, and explains key doctrines like the three natures, ālaya-vijñāna, and vijñaptimātra through everyday examples and cognitive-scientific analogies.
Waldron emphasizes Yogācāra's pragmatic role on the path to liberation, showing how its analyses of perception and reification help transform cognition and reduce suffering.
He also argues for the school's social relevance, linking its insights about constructed shared worlds to contemporary issues of knowledge production and responsibility.
The text is aimed at an attentive general audience while remaining useful to scholars and teachers of Buddhist studies.
The book traces Yogācāra's development out of early Buddhist dependent arising and Abhidharma concerns, and explains key doctrines like the three natures, ālaya-vijñāna, and vijñaptimātra through everyday examples and cognitive-scientific analogies.
Waldron emphasizes Yogācāra's pragmatic role on the path to liberation, showing how its analyses of perception and reification help transform cognition and reduce suffering.
He also argues for the school's social relevance, linking its insights about constructed shared worlds to contemporary issues of knowledge production and responsibility.
The text is aimed at an attentive general audience while remaining useful to scholars and teachers of Buddhist studies.
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Jessica Zhu
William S. Waldron, "Making Sense of Mind Only: Why Yogacara Buddhism Matters" (Wisdom Publications, 2023)
