Kumārila's Critique of Yogācāra

The Mīmāṃsā author Kumārila was one of the most formidable and determined critics of the Yogācāra philosophy and of the tradition of Buddhist epistemology that emerged within it. His biting and brilliant critique may contain valuable lessons both for students of South Asian intellectual history and for contemporary philosophers wrestling with questions of truth, semantics, idealism, and the human capacity to know.

In vv. 3 - 83 of the Nirālambanavāda chapter of the Commentary in Verses (Ślokavārttika), Kumārila mounts a powerful critique of Yogācāra in the form of a response to the dream argument. This critique engages at the level of both metaphysics and philosophy of language. Kumārila argues that a Yogācārin who denies that our concepts have external percepts, based on the analogy of a dream, can make sense neither of goal-oriented motivation nor of perceptual error. And he turns the dream argument against itself, deftly arguing that its rejection of referential views of language deprives the proponent of the argument of the ability to understand either the argument itself or any aspect of Sanskrit debate. The first paper, "Metaphysics and the Problem of Language: Ślokavārttika as a Guide for the Interpretation of Yogācāra," will expound this critique, while also drawing on it as historical evidence. Since participants in South Asian debates were held accountable for representing each other’s arguments accurately, Kumārila’s account of Yogācāra may shed light on ongoing conversations among scholars today about how to interpret the meaning of key Yogācāra teachings.

In a brief exchange with his Buddhist opponent in the Nirālambanavāda (vv. 154-59), Kumārila argues that (non-referring) expressions like “the horn of a hare” cannot bring about correct ideas. His commentator, Uṃveka, understands this as having implications for the Buddhist conception of upāya, skillful means, and of saṃvṛtisat, conventional reality. The second paper, "Kumārila against Instrumental Falsehoods," unpacks Kumārila’s reasoning and considers its implications for both Buddhist opponents and the Mīmāṃsā hermeneutic project, which relies on arthavāda, motivating speech, that some have characterized as convenient fictions.

The third paper, "Computer Simulations and Conventional Truth: Responding to Kumārila's Double Critique," explores how defenders of Yogācāra might be able to respond to Kumārila’s critique by drawing on later developments in Buddhist philosophy and contemporary developments in technology. Examples of computer simulations, especially multiplayer games, show that environments in which everything that appears is an illusion can be characterized by both misperception and goal-oriented motivation, so long as they also exhibit intersubjectively robust causal regularities.  Meanwhile, the spectacular self-destruction of the dream argument shows that a Yogācārin cannot afford to characterize conventional truth as false simpliciter. The paper argues that in this dialectical context, a key role could be played by the later distinction drawn by Buddhist epistemologists between a cognition’s being non-mistaken (abhrānta) and the distinct property of being non-deceptive (avisaṃvādaka).

It is a central claim of Yogācāra philosophy, defended by Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, that a cognition must apprehend itself in order to apprehend an object. Some believe this idea – known as the “self-awareness” (svasaṃvedana) doctrine – also to be central to certain European philosophical traditions (German idealism, Husserlian phenomenology). The fourth paper, “Does Cognition Illumine Itself,” analyzes a key passage from Kumārila’s Ślokavārttika, Śūnyavāda chapter (vv. 179cd ff.), that critiques Dignāga’s so-called memory argument for this thesis – namely, that when one remembers something, one also remembers experiencing it. The passage reveals the complexity and sophistication of a Hindu-Buddhist controversy already at an early stage.