ASANGA

flourished 5th century AD, , b. Purusapura, India influential Buddhist philosopher who established the Yogacara (Practice of Yoga) school of idealism. Asanga was the eldest of three brothers who were the sons of a Brahman, a court priest at Purusapura, and who all became monks in the Sarvastivada order (which held the doctrine that all is real). Dissatisfied with the Hinayana concepts of sunyata (emptiness) and pudgala (person), he turned to the Mahayana tradition and was credited also with winning over his brother Vasubandhu, who made many important contributions to Mahayana scholarship. Asanga's teacher in the Yogacara doctrine was Maitreyanatha, who lived about 275350. The Yogacara school (also called Vijanavada, or Doctrine of Consciousness) held that the external world exists only as mental images that have no real permanence. A storehouse of consciousness (the alaya-vijana) contains the trace impressions of the past and the potentialities of future actions. Asanga's great contribution was his development of Maitreyanatha's teaching, analysis of the alaya-vijana, and setting forth of the stages (bhumi) leading to Buddhahood. Among his important works is the Mahayana-samgraha (Compendium of the Mahayana).