Rethinking Idealism and Ineffability in Vasubandhu's Twenty Verses, Thirty Verses and Treatise on the Three Natures

Use of the term “idealism” in relation to Vasubhandu’s Vimśikā, Triṃśikā and Trisvabhāvanirdeśa has provoked controversy. I endorse the view that the term “idealist” applies to Vasubandhu insofar as his citta-mātratā theory constitutes a variant of epistemic idealism—the view that knowables are mental—along with the view that Vasubandhu is only an epistemic idealist “in the realm of conventions” (Gold 2011). The mental construction of appearances as mind-independent objects is not, for Vasubandhu, equivalent to the nature of ultimate reality. Vasubandhu does not positively argue for the non-existence of anything not-mind-only at the conventional or ultimate level. I will avoid the pitfalls of presupposing that “early Yogācāra was a homogenous and distinctly defined doxographical entity” (Tzohar 2018) to which the concept deployed in the term “idealism” does or does not correspond, by narrowing my analysis of Vasubandhu’s language and to evaluation of Gold (2011; 2015) and Carpenter’s (2014) commentaries.