heading into retreat

tomorrow night i’m heading into a two week long dzogchen retreat. during the retreat, we’ll also be studying a buddhist philosophic text that discusses the yogacara school’s view of mind and reality. or in other words, how that school described mind and reality, as a tool to assist meditators in contemplation and practice.

it’s interesting, wikipedia has this to say about the yogacara, at the moment:

There are two important aspects of the Yogacara schemata that are of special interest to modern-day practitioners. One is that virtually all schools of Mahayana Buddhism came to rely on these Yogacara explanations as they created their own doctrinal systems–even the Zen schools. For example, the important Yogacara explanation of the pervasiveness of one’s delusions through “mind-only” had an obvious influence on Zen.

That the scriptural tradition of Yogacara is not yet that well known among the community of Western practitioners is probably attributable to the fact that most of the initial transmission of Buddhism to the West has been directly concerned with more practice-oriented forms of Buddhism, such as Zen, Vipassana, and Pure Land. Also, it is a complicated system, and there are still not really any good, accessible, introductory books on the topic in Western languages. However, within Tibetan Buddhism more and more Western students are becoming acquainted with this school. Very little research in English has been carried out on the Chinese Yogacara traditions.

it is complicated perhaps, but there are an increasing number of books that are presenting this view. however, very few practitioners have been well schooled in the details and debate.

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