Yogācāra and Essentializing Identity: Recognizing our Cultural Unconscious at Work

This paper examines passages from two classical Yogācāra Buddhist texts, the Samdhinirmocana Sūtra and Yogācārabhūmi, and applies them to questions of racial and group identity. Applying the Three-Nature Theory, essentialized racial and ethnic identities are Falsely Imagined ‘illusions,’ that—though unreal—nevertheless produce real-world effects. These illusions arise from cognitive processes (Dependent Nature), that give rise to the unconscious construction of our collective realities (the ālaya-vijñāna/bhājana-loka locus), based on false ideas, images and distorted facts—the very categories people have been socialized and acculturated into. Most people are deeply attached to these constructed identities (kliṣṭa-manas), which, collectively, underlie and influence our inequitable social and cultural institutions. Liberation (Real Nature) therefore requires recognizing and remedying these sources of suffering at both individual and collective levels.