Vasubandhu’s How to Do Things with Texts: Proper Uses of Texts to Comment on Texts

When a newly discovered text is attributed to a well-known author, a common interpretive approach is to contextualize it within the author’s established oeuvre. This method allows interpreters to assess how the new text aligns with the author’s other writings and to verify its authenticity. Such an approach is often prescribed in Buddhist texts, such as the Mūlasarvāstivādavinaya, which advises monks to evaluate unknown teachings by comparing them to the recognized words of the Buddha. If an unknown teaching corresponds to the well-known teachings or the canon of the Buddha’s words, it should be accepted; if not, it is deemed spurious. I call this approach “canonical contextualization” and present Vasubandhu’s critique against it, based on the fourth chapter of the Proper Mode of Exposition (Vyākhyāyukti). His critique targets the underlying mereological assumption behind canonical contextualization by raising the following questions. What justifies grouping particular texts into a collection? Do these texts share a unifying characteristic that warrants their inclusion? By investigating Vasubandhu’s responses, I argue that he rejects canonical contextualization as a valid exegetical approach, underscoring the limited hermeneutic power of texts. For Vasubandhu, properly interpreting early Buddhist and Yogācāra texts requires a critical examination of established textual contexts and an acceptance that Yogācāra stands outside these boundaries. 

This presentation clarifies Vasubandhu’s perspective on Buddhist texts and highlights significant parallels between his hermeneutic and ontological positions. Through numerous examples and citations, Vasubandhu argues in The Proper Mode that all Buddhist texts are fragmented, inconsistent, and incomplete, with doctrines and prescriptions that often conflict. He demonstrates that such discrepancies are present in all textual collections, śrāvaka or Mahāyāna, and rejects all claims of a unified canonical collection as a failure to listen to texts’ disparate voices. Based on his arguments in The Proper Mode, this presentation draws an important parallel between the hermeneutic claim of a unified canon and ontological holism that believes in a whole permeating its parts. Just as one might mistakenly assume that personal identity is present in every component of oneself, an exegete assumes that each authentic text contains a distinctive marker of canonicity, whether doctrinal or stylistic. Such mistaken assumptions, Vasubandhu indicates, prevent one from properly understanding oneself and Buddhist texts, canonical or others. 

This presentation emphasizes two implications of Vasubandhu’s critique against the hermeneutic-ontological assumption of unified wholes. First, this assumption impedes proper exegesis. According to Vasubandhu, a commentator preoccupied with identifying a unifying feature of canonicity “wastes away” (chud gsan pa, chud za ba) his precious life, much like a misguided philosopher searching for a whole in its parts. Instead of adhering to canonical contextualizaton, commentators should first listen to the variegated voices of Buddhist texts. Second, Vasubandhu’s argument of Buddhist texts as incomplete and contradictory significantly reduces their interpretive power. This position is more radical than the Saṁdhinirmocana Three Turnings stratification of śrāvaka, Madhyamaka, and Yogācāra texts, which multiplies valid interpretive contexts by acknowledging different levels of doctrinal-textual contexts. Vasubandhu, by contrast, questions the very coherence of any collection, even of Yogācāra. This presentation concludes with an investigation into the implications of his position by examining the question: if all Buddhist texts, including Yogācāra ones, possess limited hermeneutic potency, how should a commentator interpret them?