Introduction

The current study examines Kuiji’s 窺基 (632–682) deployment of adhipati as a unique theory of intersubjectivity derived from Yogācāra Buddhism. Here, adhipati is translated as “activating and amplifying influence” (Ch: zengshang 增上or zengshang li 增上力 or zengshang yuan 增上緣). The current analysis shows that Kuiji envisioned adhipati as Yogācāra intersubjectivity to support the scholastic project of teaching and hearing. Instead of conducting a comprehensive analysis of Kuiji’s writings on the various complex doctrinal models involved in this scholastic project, the current project focuses on two of Kuiji’s commentaries that preserved his mature theorization of adhipati and intersubjectivity while contextualizing the exegesis of these works within the larger corpus of Chinese Yogācāra treatises when necessary.Footnote 1 The first commentarial work is Notes on Twenty Verses of Consciousness-only (Ch: Weishi ershi lun shuji 唯識二十論述記; T1834; henceforth, Notes20). Kuiji claimed that this commentary is a record of the instructions he received and discussions in which he participated when assisting Xuanzang 玄奘 (602–664) with translating Vasubandhu’s Viṃśika (Treatise in Twenty Verses; T1834.978c24–25) into classical Chinese. The second source is Kuiji’s commentary on Xuanzang’s Establishing Consciousness-only (Ch: Cheng weishi lun 成唯識論; T1585; henceforth, CWSL). This commentary, titled Notes on the Treatise of Establishing Consciousness-only (Ch: Chengweishi lun shuji 成唯識論述記; T1830; henceforth, Notes30), is a key Yogācāra exegetical work that was lost in China during the Tang dynasty and only reintroduced from Japan during the late nineteenth century.Footnote 2

The current study adopts Wilfrid Sellars’ model of doing philosophy and reconstructing “how things hang together” for Kuiji’s soteriological project grounded in consciousness-only doctrines (Garfield, 2015; Sellars, 1963; van Norden, 2017; Waldron, 2023). It examines how Kuiji conceptualizes genuine intersubjective interactions without assuming the existence of mind-independent objects. To do so, the present investigation poses the following questions: What are the methodologically unresolved but important questions in Kuiji’s Yogācāra? What are Kuiji’s most salient concerns and important questions? Finally, for Kuiji, what counts as a soteriological problem or a solution and why?

Crucially, this investigation shows that, instead of speculating on the metaphysical status of the intersubjective, the methodologically unresolved but important question for Kuiji is this: how can intersubjective karmic flows happen if everything perceptible is mere conscious processes without presuming a single, mind-independent, objective, spatio-temporal world? It is textbook knowledge that, a single, mind-independent, spatio-temporal world populated by mind-independent dharmas is a given in Abhidharmic realism. This branch of Buddhist philosophy conceives reality in terms of dharmas, i.e., the momentarily arising and disappearing building blocks with its own mind-independent svabhāva (self-nature). Therefore, in Abhidharmic systems, intersubjective karmic influences are unproblematic because they presume the existence of one single outside world. However, after Nāgārjuna’s refutation of svabhāva of dharmas, all subsequent philosophers must comprehend the seemingly objective and the seemingly intersubjective existences anew.

The problem of intersubjectivity, or how to know other minds, is particularly acute in Yogācāra because of its metaphysical incoherence by affirming both the truth of consciousness-only (Ch: weishi 唯識; Skt: vijñapti-mātra or vijñāna-mātra) and the coexistence of multiple minds. To begin with, this consciousness-only system sees liberation as letting go of the subject-object duality, and yet rejects a single mind as the absolute entity while taking for granted the existence of multiple minds (Yamabe, 1998, pp. 20–21; Waldron, 2023). More problematically, the mainstream Yogācāra tenet claims that each individual mental stream generates its own distinct lifeworld. Because Yogācāra philosophy takes for granted the coexistence of multiple distinct lifeworlds, the problem of intersubjectivity is further complicated by the problem of incommensurability: how could sentient beings enacting distinct lifeworlds communicate and find a common measure if there is no one single mind-independent outside?

To complicate the issue further, orthodox Hindu philosophical schools, such as Sāṃkhya and Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, classify Yogācāra as idealism and Madhyamaka as nihilism (Yao, 2020, p. 149). Consequently, Yogācāra philosophers, especially those who saw themselves as followers of Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka, must defend themselves against two kinds of ontological charges, i.e., charges of nihilism and monistic idealism. Notably, these doctrinal debates were often marked by striking metaphors of violence and othering.Footnote 3 Further, the Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike were vicious in their denunciation of one another and were equally invested in polemics (Ober, 2023, pp. 48–53). Generally speaking, there is scholarly consensus on main Yogācāra philosophical defenses against nihilism (Yao, 2020, pp. 61–62, 151–152).

Nevertheless, whether and how different Yogācāra schools distinguish themselves from various idealist positions remain highly contested. To be sure, the characterization of Yogācāra as idealism is not totally ahistorical. By Xuanzang and Kuiji’s time, at least some branches of Yogācāra, such as the epistemological school of Dignāga (ca. 480–540 CE) and Dharmakīrti (~ late six century), had developed certain doctrines that can be read as reifying mind as substantially existing and thereby had been classified as a form of metaphysical idealism by Madhyamaka philosophers, such as Buddhapālita (ca. 470–550) and Candrakīrti (ca. 600–650) and by followers of mainstream Tibetan Buddhism (Waldron, 2023, p. 9).Footnote 4

Instead of weighing in the metaphysical debate of whether Yogācāra is idealism or not, many scholars have turned their analytic focus on a different set of questions: how consciousness matters in the mycelial networks of karmic actions of different lifeworlds and how this anti-essentialist theorizing of conscious actions help lessen human being’s psychological propensity to objectify, essentialize, and reify fluid concepts and constructed categories. As has been convincingly argued by William Waldron, early Yogācāra philosophers were not primarily concerned with ontological investigations of the nature of mind. Rather, Yogācāra thinkers adopted the early Buddhist teaching of dependent arising as a mode of discerning patterns of dynamic relations and Abhidharmic analysis of mental processes so to offer their own coherent theory of liberation (Waldron, 2023, pp. 84–102, 124–144). Similarly, Peter Hershock, in his recent critical-construction of Buddhist philosophy of consciousness, also highlights Buddhist mode of analysis as a “karmic-relational ontology” (2023, p. 33). This line of inquiry is particularly relevant in understanding Chinese Yogācāra because, unlike its Tibetan sibling whose traditional doxography typically classified Yogācāra as some forms of metaphysical idealism, Chinese Yogācāra commentarial traditions rarely engaged with ontological debates and instead inquired more into efficacious practices that can lead to liberation. Thusly, building upon existing studies on the intersection of Yogācāra and processual philosophy, the modest goal of the current study is to clarify how Chinese Yogācārins theorized intersubjective interplay through the lens of processual, relational analysis.

A clearer understanding of Kuiji’s Yogācāra intersubjectivity sheds new light on important features of Chinese Yogācāra philosophy, i.e., their primary concern with successful practical actions at the expense of ontological speculations. At the risk of stating the obvious, Buddhist philosophy is soteriology-oriented: most metaphysical, epistemological, and other theoretical ruminations are put to serve the theory and praxis of liberation. Consequently, one important aspect of Buddhist philosophical inquiry is on both the process of acting and the efficacy of actions. When Yogācāra philosophy entered China, this philosophical orientation toward soteriology was further enhanced because the pre-Buddhist Chinese philosophy abhors ontology and is action-oriented and relation-centered (Valmisa, 2021, pp. 1–4; Wong, 2023, pp. 6–17). As such, even though Greco-European ontological debates between realism, idealism, anti-realism, anti-foundationalism, or other forms of metaphysical inquiries could facilitate intercultural conversations, by and large, Kuiji’s theory of adhipati should not be forced into the Greco-European ontological debates.

Rather, as has been pointed out by many scholars over the last two decades, Yogācāra philosophers were clearly aware of the metaphysical inconsistency of consciousness-only and multiple minds: if one can know the mental objects of other minds, then it implies that one can reach objects outside one’s mind, which opens the door to the existence of mind-independent objects and thus makes the Yogācāra system metaphysically incoherent (Yamabe, 1998, pp. 28–29; Lusthaus, 2002, pp. 487–491; Waldron, 2023). This inconsistency can be also seen as a contradiction of epistemic realism (the Yogācāra assertion that one can perceive other minds) and the ontologically idealist position that everything perceptible is mere conscious processes (Li, 2019, p. 440). Yamabe (1998) further speculates that one possible reason for the Yogācāra lack of rigor in treating the problem of other minds in contrast to their treatment of material objects is pragmatic, i.e., consciousness-only teaching leads to efficacious action of removing attachment to material things (pp. 35–36). The ontological status of other minds only remains at the margins of the Yogācāra soteriological horizon and only got systematically treated in Vasubandhu’s works (Yamabe, 1998, p. 39). Since Kuiji inherited Vasubandhu’s pragmatic concern, a more fruitful path forward is to analyze Kuiji’s philosophy following the phenomenological approach developed by Dan Lusthaus (2002) and the three-level comparative approach by Jingjing Li (2022), both of which contextualize Yogācāra within the pragmatic, soteriological horizon.

Two issues are central to Kuiji’s soteriological project: the first is avoiding charges of solipsism and the second is addressing the problem of other minds. Both issues need to be resolved in order to explain the karmic efficacy of teaching and hearing between the mental continuums that can teach (Ch: nengjiaozhe 能教者) and the mental continuums that are taught (Ch: suojiaozhe 所教者).Footnote 5 My investigation reveals that, in Notes20, Kuiji primarily deploys adhipati to explain the seemingly subjective (or phenomenological) experiences of the intersubjective processes of teaching and hearing, while in Notes30, he chiefly uses adhipati to explain the seemingly objective aspects of these intersubjective interactions such as the causal power of words, phrases, and syllables. While Kuiji is certainly neither the first nor the only Yogācāra philosopher who links adhipati with teaching and learning, his extensive and systematic treatment of this issue is worthy of further investigation because it may have reflected a broader shift in the philosophical outlooks, i.e., from the Indian Gupta era debates about ontological coherence and systemacity to the prevailing Chinese philosophical concerns about efficacy and action.

As a brief prolegomenon, it is important to draw readers’ attention to a technical issue: in Kuiji’s commentarial works examined in this essay, a cluster of concepts, i.e., adhipati-pratyaya, ādhipatya, and adhipati as well as their related Chinese translations zengshang yuan 增上緣, zengshang li 增上力, and zengshang 增上, are deployed interchangeably in a specific way: as the activating and amplifying karmic influences among different worlds enacted by respective mental continuums. While zengshang yuan has been reliably used to translate adhipati-pratyaya, there are no clear correspondence among ādhipatya, adhipati, zengshang li, and zengshang. Often, when zengshang is deployed alone, it could refer to all derivatives from the prefix adhi- (over, upon) combined with the verbal root √pat (to fall, to fly) or just the prefixes of adhi- or abhi- (onto, near) combined with derivatives of other verbs.

To gain a sense of how different these terms were used before Kuiji’s deployment of them, the current inquiry relies on two existing studies. In his classic study of Xuanzang’s Yogācāra, Lusthaus (2002) demonstrates that in CWSL adhipati-pratyaya is deployed as a catch-all category to account for karmic conditions not included in the first three of the four types of conditionings (pp. 504–505).Footnote 6 Vasubandhu’s deployment of adhipati is very different from the use of adhipati-pratyaya as a subcategory of causes and conditions. As convincingly argued by Sonam Kachru, in Vasubandhu’s Twenty Verses, adhipati adopts its meaning from ādhipatya (dominance) and is best translated as “constitutive and determining influence” (2021, p. 90). More concretely, when a relation between two spheres is indicated as adhipati, the two spheres are said to “overlap, with what happens in one being subject to the sovereignty and authority of what goes on in another” (Kachru, 2021, p. 94). Vasubandhu employs adhipati in 18ab of Twenty Verses to mean that sentient beings are “constitutively open to the influence of one another, as falling, that is, under each other’s sway” (Kachru, 2021, p. 94). Obviously, these constitutive and determining influences apply to many situations, including the processes of teaching and killing—the focus of the current study of Kuiji’s theory of action. Note that Vasubandhu utilized adhipati and related terms to indicate the impossibility of framing ālayavijñāna (storehouse consciousness; Ch: alaiye shi 阿賴耶識) as an independent, self-enclosed entity. Instead, Vasubandhu’s uses highlight how each stream of ālayavijñāna is constituted, at least in part, by the historical sediments of past intersubjective karmic interplays.

After Vasubandhu’s writings were transmitted to China, freed from the need to engage with Indian ontological speculations and yet pressured to address the prevailing Chinese philosophical concern with efficacious actions, Kuiji further conceptualized adhipati as a Yogācāra theory of successful intersubjective action grounded in pre-subjective karmic entanglement. Before venturing into Kuiji’s philosophy of effective intersubjective actions, it is necessary to clarify my use of three terms, namely, pre-subjective, intersubjective, and post-subjective. In this study, “pre-subjective” describes karmic processes directly linked to ālayavijñāna because ālayavijñāna as aggregated mental processes are defined as inconceivable (Skt: asaṃviditaka; Ch: bukezhi 不可知), neither pleasant nor unpleasant (Skt: upekṣā; Ch: she 捨), karmically indeterminant (Skt: avyākṛta; Ch: wuji 無記), unhindered (Skt: anivṛta; Ch: wufu 無覆). As a form of non-dualistic karmic entanglement of unconscious or subconscious processes, ālayavijñāna is devoid of subject and object divide. Only at the level of adhipati, when the good or bad karmic seeds bear fruits and develop dualities, will the differentiation of self-other arise and the cognition of different subjectivities, intersubjectivities, and objectivities become possible, which in turn enables the construction of even more derivative concepts such as sovereignty and authority of individual subjects. In other words, the intersubjective potentials are already present in the non-dual ālayavijñāna because of the historical sediments of past intersubjective karmic interactions. However, for the present intersubjective karmic processes to happen and for different mental streams to be mutually recognized as subjects, latent karmic potentials in ālayavijñāna need to be activated and amplified by adhipati. For lack of a better word, this study uses “pre-subjective” to distinguish the nondual, primary functioning of ālayavijñāna from the intersubjective, secondary functioning of adhipati. The term “entanglement” is evoked metaphorically to suggest the notion of quantum entanglement, an equally inconceivable world where all elementary particles lose its individuality and become an entangled oneness without any differentiation of one particle from another. Only when this entangled state is lost will there arise the distinctions of one particle from another particle. As a useful metaphor, readers can liken the distinction between the nondual ālayavijñāna and the dualistic mental perceptions of the first six senses in terms of the distinction between the pre-subjective karmic entanglement (like the world of quantum entanglement) and the intersubjective karmic interplay (like the classical Newtonian world). In Yogācāra, the seventh consciousness or the ego-consciousness plays the mysterious role of transforming nondual ālayavijñāna into dualistic life forms and their related lifeworlds. In contrast to pre-subjective and intersubjective, both of which describe the mental processes of deluded commoners, “post-subjective” is deployed to indicate the karmic connections between buddhas (who do not see the worlds in dualistic, subject-object perspectives) and deluded commoners. Post-subjective is not meant to be descriptive because, even authors of the Yogācāra texts refrain from commenting on the Buddha’s cognition. As such, post-subjective only functions as a marker to highlight certain communicative processes involving an enlightened being and commoners that are presented in the Yogācāra texts as distinct from other forms of intersubjective communications.

To highlight Kuiji’s unique deployment of adhipati, in the current study, all three (zengshang, zengshang li, and zengshang yuan) are translated as “activating and amplifying influence.” In particular, the Chinese verbs are rendered as “activating” (Ch: zeng 增) and “amplifying” (Ch: shang 上) to convey a sense of power or determination. Furthermore, precisely because both verbs imply a power differential and because the nominalizers “condition” (Ch: yuan 緣) and “force” (Ch: li 力) convey a similar sense of the power to influence, all three terms are translated as “activating and amplifying influence.” Note that, in Kuiji’s employment, adhipati connotes different power dynamics. In cases of teaching, adhipati is usually deployed in its sense of continuation: as the power to activate or validate or enhance what is latent. However, in cases of killing, adhipati means “to terminate”: as the power to cease existence. Regardless of the different shades of meaning, adhipati in Kuiji’s commentaries functions primarily as an explanation for intersubjective karmic interactions between different mental continuums. In contrast with Kachru’s translation, where “constitutive and determining” entails the power to establish or give organized existence to something, in Kuiji’s use, adhipati conveys a weaker sense of assisting or empowering latent potentialities, hence “activating and amplifying influence.” As shown in later sections, Kuiji prioritizes the positive connotation of the power to activate because his core concern is to establish the soteriological viability of teaching and hearing.

This paper unfolds in four parts. The first section complicates the problem of intersubjectivity by highlighting its entanglement with the problem of incommensurable lifeworlds. The second section reviews recent scholarly discussions on the problem of intersubjectivity in Yogācāra Buddhism and highlights the philosophical difference of grounding intersubjectivity in similar karma (Ch: gongye 共業 or tongye 同業) and in adhipati: in essence, the former may be incidental parallel plays, the latter entails a genuine intersubjective interplay. The third section examines how Kuiji deploys adhipati to explain how and why the Buddha’s words have karmic influence (i.e., the power to activate and amplify) on the mental streams of deluded sentient beings. The fourth section investigates Kuiji’s use of adhipati as the power to dominate or terminate in cases of killing. In the conclusion, I point out some modern developments related to Kuiji’s soteriology and demonstrate the effectiveness of my proposed method in studying Yogācāra philosophy as a living tradition.

Intersubjectivity and Incommensurability

Before tackling the problem intersubjectivity, scholars must confront the problem of incommensurability. These two problems are uniquely entangled due to the Yogācāra’s metaphysically inconsistent assertion of both consciousness-only and the existence of other minds. Indeed, one of the most distinctive Yogācāra challenge to the contemporary mode of knowledge production is that Yogācāra rejects the core scientific premise that there is one single, natural, mind-independent world that can be known and acted upon successfully in ONLY one way. This is because all Yogācāra philosophers agree that each sentient being has a distinct ālayavijñāna that generates its own mind-dependent natural world and projections of other minds (Yamabe, 1998, pp. 20–21). If the Yogācāra description of perceptible reality is true, then there are multiple, distinct, and potentially incommensurable worlds. Consequently, there are potentially an infinite number of incommensurable knowledge systems that guide how the respective world could be acted upon successfully in multiple ways.

In Chinese Yogācāra, this problem of incommensurability is particularly acute. The Chinese Yogācāra philosophers had long noticed the fact that, in philosophical debates among Buddhist thinkers and between Buddhist and Brahmanical philosophers, the debating parties often hold key premises that are fundamentally at odds, e.g., the Brahmanical teaching of ātman (self) and the Buddhist doctrine of anātman (no-self). To deal with this unbridgeable philosophical divide yet still engage in meaningful debates, the Chinese Yogācāra scholars adopted a “propositional attitude” that distinguishes “what you consider to be real” and “what I consider to be real” (Yao, 2020, pp. 123–128). However, as convincingly argued by Yao, the reliance on the propositional attitude could lead to the situation where the debaters are trapped in the incommensurability of rival positions (2020, p. 127).

At the risk of stating the obvious, thus-far, mainstream academic discussions of intersubjectivity presumes the existence of one single objective spatio-temporal world. Consequently, in contemporary academia, scholars of Yogācāra face the same dilemma of incommensurability. On the one hand, the Yogācāra mainstream position of multiple minds and multiple worlds not only contradicts common sense in the contemporary world but also seems fundamentally at odds with the scientific spirit, i.e., scientific knowledge production must be grounded in ontological realism or physicalism of one world. While rarely any contemporary scientist would hold onto ONE correct way to do science, the mainstream premise of the modern scientific enterprise including social sciences is still that there is a single, objective world that can be known and acted upon successfully through the collective practices and mutual examinations by the whole scientific community (Oreskes, 2021, pp. 15–68). This confidence in one world is largely premised upon metaphysical foundationalism that conceives a reality constituted by some fundamental entities, which is precisely what Yogācāra philosophers reject.

On the other hand, for the last two decades, anthropologists have forcefully argued for the coexistence of multiple non-commensurable ontologies and multiple non-commensurable worlds (Henare et al., 2007). This experiential knowledge about the existence of multiple ontologies is also philosophically viable. As lucidly illustrated by Jan Westerhoff, with regard to the metaphysical foundationalist premise that everything real and observable can be reduced to some fundamentally existing entities, if one considers the various propositions of irrealism, anti-foundationalism, and non-foundationalism, then it becomes clear that the scientific commitment to one single world is at least as problematic as various non-foundationalist philosophies (2020, pp. 152–245), including the Yogācāra ones.

Once scholars take into account the Yogācāra commitment to the existence of multiple, potentially incommensurable worlds (in contrast to the implicit scholarly assumption of one single world), then the problem of Yogācāra intersubjectivity should not be taken as whether intersubjectivity exists or not but rather should be framed as follows: how could sentient beings inhabiting different and possibly incommensurable worlds affect one another across different lifeworlds and engage in intersubjective interplay?

According to Yogācāra thinkers, even if there are multiple incommensurable worlds, there are still meaningful ways to study them and communicate across these worlds. On the one hand, Yogācāra acknowledges variation as constitutive of all lifeworlds and takes it to be a self-evident truth that no one type of sentient beings could exhaust what life involves. In other words, the Yogācāra reality entails not only differences that pertain to individuals within a species and across species but also a diverse range of possible objects that characterizes the lived environment, which are in turn karmically connected to different life forms (Kachru, 2021, pp. 87–88). On the other hand, Yogācāra thinkers take it for granted that sentient beings inhabiting different worlds are nonetheless karmically connected, i.e., that each mental stream supported by their respective karmically entangled ālayavijñāna is inevitably connected with many other mental streams and open to be transformed by other mental streams (Yamabe, 1998, pp. 27–34). It is precisely this karmic connectedness that enables Yogācāra philosophers to conceive the possibility and efficacy of intersubjective interplay across different lifeworlds.

Because it is unlikely to resolve the metaphysical issue of one world vs. many potentially incommensurable worlds within the foreseeable future and, needless to say, a satisfactory, self-consistent ontology of intersubjectivity taking into consideration of multiple incommensurable worlds remains a distant dream, I suggest that we take seriously the Yogācāra pragmatic attitude, bracket the metaphysical ruminations for the rest of this study. Instead, let us consider the Yogācāra solution to the soteriological problem of how intersubjective interplay functions across different worlds. To translate the Yogācāra theory of intersubjectivity into more comprehensible English, I borrow Chris Vasantkumar’s theory and terms, namely, “successful practical actions” and “actionable reals” (2022, p. 819).

Although Vasantkumar still imagines an unknowable “ontic Real,” this convenient fiction is largely utilized to envision an “ontic capaciousness” that allows for the ontic Real “to accommodate multiple modes of successful practical action and their materio-cultural precipitates” (Vasantkumar, 2022, p. 822). To support his claim that there are diverse, plural, often incommensurable actionable reals that build up “historically sedimented patterns of successful practical action,” he provides two examples. One draws from Shigehisa Kuriyama’s renowned study of the analytic body of the Western medicine in contrast to the incommensurable qi-configured body of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) (Kuriyama, 1999). To this day, direct experimental observation of qi has never been documented. And yet, Kuriyama’s report of the early modern European observation of the “astonishing prowess” of Chinese healers and the continuing efficacy of TCM have been repeatedly confirmed by many anthropologists and clinical studies (Vasantkumar, 2022, p. 829). The human body, instead of being a universal entity, shows up as two drastically different actionable reals in two incommensurable worlds formed by different historically sedimented successful actions. The other example draws from a wealth of study of different navigation techniques that treat the ocean in drastically different terms, i.e., the magnetic ocean that can only be discerned and acted upon by the navigational systems of Western magnetic compass vs. the ocean of wave patterns only discernable by the vestibular ways of knowing in the traditional navigation of Pacific peoples (Vasantkumar, 2022, pp. 827–829).

We can translate Vasantkumar’s insight of the existence of multiple worlds and the way to study them into Yogācāra terms. Actionable reals function like what Yogācāra termed as distant and direct ālambana (objective basis), or what Kachru terms as objects “correlated with life-forms” (Kachru, 2021, p. 87). As for historically sedimented patterns of successful practical actions, they metaphorically correspond to various functions of adhipati explained in this study. The contribution of the current study lies in the fact that all previous undertakings of Buddhist intersubjectivity train their analytic focus on the mental objects or actionable reals, in contrast, the present investigation turns the analytic attention to the problem of effective practical actions or adhipati that gives rise to what is commonly understood as intersubjective interplay.

The Problem of Yogācāra Intersubjectivity: I Take Refuge in the Saṃgha, but How?

The problem of Yogācāra intersubjectivity is aptly captured by Garfield’s (2019) review essay, “I Take Refuge in the Sangha. But How? The Puzzle of Intersubjectivity in Buddhist Philosophy Comments on Tzohar, Prueitt, and Kachru.” Garfield’s critique raises two important yet unresolved questions in the study of Indic Yogācāra Buddhism. The first question posed by Garfield relates to whether, and if so how, Yogācāra thinkers avoid the charge of solipsism, while the second considers how Yogācāra thinkers resolve the problem of other minds and thereby account for the genuine intersubjective interactions required by “I take refuge in the Saṃgha.” These questions are not limited to early Indian Buddhism. As shown in the next section, medieval Chinese Yogācārins inherited the puzzle of intersubjectivity and the charge of solipsism. They employed a line of defense advanced by Kuiji but attributed to Xuanzang’s teacher Dharmapāla. Before philosophically reconstructing Kuiji’s solution, it is necessary to summarize the Indian proposals to provide a backdrop.

As pointed out by Jay Garfield (2019, pp. 85–86) and Roy Tzohar (2019, pp. 57–58), despite the paramount significance of intersubjective experience in Buddhist soteriology, scholars have yet to pay adequate attention to the historical and philosophical development of this topic. Indeed, Lusthaus’s Buddhist Phenomenology (2002) is the first academic monograph that touches upon the intersubjective and collective aspects of Buddhist soteriology mediated by the concept of karma. More than a decade later, Tzohar (2016), Catherine Prueitt (2018), and Kachru (2019) rekindled this discussion, collectively examining the conceptualization and preconditions of intersubjectivity in Indian Yogācāra. Briefly speaking, both Tzohar and Prueitt analyze how Indian Yogācārins such as Vasubandhu and Dharmakīrti developed a constellation of concepts related to shared or similar karma to explain how the illusion of experiencing one shared external world arise.

However, in seeing intersubjectivity as similar karma, Vasubandhu and Dharmakīrti “confuse parallel play with cooperative activity” (Garfield, 2019, p. 87). This is problematic because while parallel play of similar karma can explain how an external object “operates in the same way for each of us,” it fails to give us “genuine intersubjectivity” that requires “mutual recognition as subjects” and “causal interactions” among streams of consciousnesses (Garfield, 2019, pp. 87–88). Instead of articulating early theorizations of intersubjectivity, Kachru (2019) takes on a different task: the threat of solipsism. Examining both Xuanzang’s dismissal of solipsism and Ratnakīrti’s (990–1050) critique of Dharmakīrti’s The Justification of other minds (Santānāntarasiddi), Kachru points out a key problem in Xuanzang’s and Dharmakīrti’s theory of intersubjectivity, namely, Xuanzang and Dharmakīrti confuse two incommensurable conceptions of mind: one that is entirely first-personal and another that is not first-personal at all (2021, pp. 64, 66, 68). This non-first-personal conception of mind can be better described as “phenomenal presence” of the mind (Tzohar, 2019, p. 60).Footnote 7

More than a philosophical rumination, this attempt to resolve the threat of solipsism and account for genuine intersubjectivity holds the possibility of liberation. Indeed, as Garfield (2019) argues, “Both Buddhist epistemology and phenomenology require a robust account of intersubjectivity if its soteriological enterprise is to get off the ground” (p. 89). Garfield (2019) also notes that although early Buddhist philosophers were at least implicitly aware of that fact, they in no way “adequately conceived the intersubjective” (p. 89).

The soteriological significance is precisely the starting point of Jingjing Li’s (2019) investigation of the later Yogācāra theory of intersubjectivity—that is, the experience of other minds as arising from remote ālambana (“remote objective basis”; Ch: shu suoyuanyuan 疏所緣緣)—as advanced by Xuanzang and Kuiji but attributed to Dharmapāla.Footnote 8 Li’s central argument is that Xuanzang and Kuiji frame the phenomenal presence of other minds in terms of remote ālambana and explicate this intersubjective collectivity with a metaphor of mirroring experience. More specifically, for Xuanzang and Kuiji, the term “mind” never suggests an entirely first-personal perspective. Li (2019) argues that Xuanzang and Kuiji conceptualize the subjective experience of other minds as an experience of “you in the collective context of the consciousness of the we” (p. 449). This theorization, more than a defense of the internal consistency of the Yogācāra system or a reconciliation between epistemological realism and Yogācāra idealism, has real soteriological implications. Li argues that it opens up a soteriological choice for sentient beings: either “affirming egoistic apathy” or “awakening altruistic empathy” (2019, p. 449). Thus, for Xuanzang and Kuiji, the significance of experiencing other minds weighs more on its pragmatic efficacy to bring forth liberation.

To reveal this overlooked relation between the philosophical rumination and pragmatic efficacy, Li (2019) draws from core Chinese Yogācāra treatises and commentaries. Li convincingly demonstrates that Xuanzang and Kuiji’s use of remote ālambana and the metaphor of the mirror satisfy the three necessary and sufficient conditions for resolving the problem of other minds:

  • C1 Other minds have real existence;

  • C2 They can be perceived;

  • C3 Other minds are not mind-independent but rely on our minds to appear as phenomena for us (Li, 2019, p. 440).Footnote 9

In this way, Li (2019) shows that, unlike some early Yogācāra doctrines that tend to collapse the differences between self and other, Xuanzang and Kuiji’s new paradigm maintains the alterity between differently minded creatures while emphasizing community and collectivity as part and parcel of the interdependent mental existence (p. 450). As Li reveals, this self–other interdependence lies at the core of Xuanzang and Kuiji’s soteriological project. It makes it possible for sages to help ordinary beings and for ordinary beings to learn from sages so as to purify the mind and embark on the journey of liberation.

Although remote ālambana is deemed a valid solution by Xuanzang and Kuiji, attentive readers may be puzzled as to exactly how causal, intersubjective karmic interactions happen across different lifeworlds engendered by different ālayavijñānas. Furthermore, they may recognize that Xuanzang’s and Kuiji’s positions on these two issues are not always perfectly aligned. As Lusthaus (2002) cautions, Kuiji had his own institutional agenda that is manifested in both his initial request for Xuanzang to compose CWSL and in his positioning himself as the heir of Xuanzang in his own commentaries (pp. 382–425).

Informed by Lusthaus’s (2002) and Li’s (2019) insights, the next section offers new evidence showing that Kuiji expands Xuanzang’s theorization of intersubjectivity grounded in remote ālambana and combines the theory of intersubjectivity with an institutional agenda. As the evidence demonstrates, in his two commentaries, Kuiji systematically foregrounds adhipati as the karmic mechanism that explains intersubjective influences across different lifeworlds; he likewise reorients adhipati as the justification for a Yogācāra scholastic, soteriological enterprise.

Kuiji: Adhipati and the Soteriological Possibility of Teaching and Hearing

For Kuiji, adhipati reveals the mental mechanism that gives rise to both intersubjective and post-subjective cognitive processes. Adhipati is important to Kuiji for two reasons. First, it effectively addresses the problem of other minds and thereby allows medieval Chinese Yogācārins to defend themselves against the allegation of solipsism. Second, and more importantly, in Kuiji’s systematic foregrounding of it, adhipati explains the karmic, causal interactions between different mental continuums of consciousnesses inhabiting different lifeworlds so as to establish the possibility of liberation through efficacious actions of teaching and hearing. The events of teaching and hearing must involve both intersubjective and post-subjective cognitive processes. Kuiji employs adhipati to explain the karmic interplays in both situations. In this sense, Kuiji resolves the soteriological problem in a consciousness-only paradigm, “I take refuge in the Saṃgha through adhipati.”

To begin with, like Xuanzang, Kuiji explicitly affirms the existence of other minds for the purpose of establishing the efficacy of words and utterances in the collaborative soteriological project. This affirmation appears in Kuiji’s commentary on Vasubandhu’s auto-commentary of verse 18ab.Footnote 10 Because of its centrality in understanding Kuiji’s theorization of the intersubjective and its key role in establishing the legitimacy of the soteriological enterprise, this passage is translated in full as follows:

[Vasubandhu’s] treatise says: Because all sentient beings [are the respective] mental continuums of self and other, these consciousnesses function, mutually and in a historically sedimented manner, as activating and amplifying influences.

論曰: 以諸有情自他相續, 諸識展轉為增上緣。Footnote 11

[Kuiji] notes: This sentence explains the first verse. Because all sentient beings (i.e., others who can teach and the self who can hear), each [possesses] one’s own mental continuum of eight kinds of consciousnesses, these [mental continuums of consciousnesses] function, mutually and in a historically sedimented matter, as activating and amplifying influences. The intended meaning is this: it is manifested as the intimate ālambana, as the mental objects of one’s internal mind; this is called consciousness-only. This is not to negate the existence of other sentient beings outside one’s [own] mind and so on [translator’s emphasis]. Outsiders say that the mind depends on mind-independent dharma to obtain other beings’ oral teachings. Here, [our argument] is different. Those who can teach and those who are taught function, mutually and in a historically sedimented manner, as activating and amplifying influences. For this reason, one’s own consciousnesses transform [the activating and amplifying influences] as if those who can teach and those who are heard are the intimate ālambana within one’s own mental continuum. [In reality], one cannot intimately obtain others’ oral teachings. [If] this [event of teaching and being taught] is remote ālambana, then there is no fault in the meaning [of consciousness-only]. This is why it is said, “[These consciousnesses] function, mutually and in a historically sedimented manner, as activating and amplifying influences.” This is why, in [Xuanzang’s] CWSL, it is called “remote ālambana” [translator’s emphasis].

述曰: 此釋初句頌。以諸有情他能教者、自能聽者, 各各相續八種諸識, 此彼展轉為增上緣。此意即顯親緣心內自所變境, 名為唯識, 非遮心外他有情等。外人說心緣心外法親得他人所說之法, 今則不然, 能、所教者展轉互為增上緣故, 自識變似能教、所聽, 為自相續識親所緣。不能親取他所說法, 為疎所緣, 於義無失, 此說「展轉為增上緣」故, 《成唯識》說為疎所緣故」(T1834.1002b17-26).

Four points needs further unpack here. First of all, Kuiji explicitly affirms the existence of other minds as different mental continuums of eight consciousnesses as well as other things existing outside one’s own mind. Kuiji simultaneously rejects the solipsistic interpretation that collapses other minds or objects as emanating from one’s own inner psyche, as seen in the claim “This is not to negate the existence of other sentient beings outside one’s [own] mind and so on.”Footnote 12 Hence, when Kuiji talks about the mind (Ch: xin 心), he clearly explains that the phenomenal experience of other minds is caused by the force of adhipati, which is external to the phenomenal experience of the self, and that this adhipati is further constructed by the mental continuum of one’s own consciousnesses into a presence like an intimate ālambana stemming from the first-personal perspective. In other words, both the self (i.e., the first-personal presence) and the other (i.e., the phenomenal experience of other minds) arise from the causal force of adhipati and the subsequent karmic transformations within one’s own mental continuum.Footnote 13 My analysis of this refusal to collapse the self and other, as shown in this passage, is consistent with Li’s (2019) analysis of other relevant passages. Yet it is in stark contrast with other attempts in Indian Yogācāra to resolve this problem, as pointed out by Kachru (2019) and Tzohar (2016).

Second, in contrast to CWSL’s classification of adhipati as a catch-all category, listed as the fourth in the well-known classification of four conditionings (Ch: siyuan 四緣) to subsume any conditions other than hetu, samanantara, and ālambana, Kuiji deploys adhipati to explain how remote ālambana (a subcategory of ālambana in CWSL) could function as the objective basis of communication, as seen at the end of the previous long quote (T1834.1002b26). In doing so, Kuiji is able to incorporate Xuanzang’s solution to the problem of other minds using remote ālambana to justify his own preference for adhipati. As the core of Xuanzang’s solution, remote ālambana, when embraced as “the I-You interdependence,” enables one to “perceive other minds without mistreating them as sui generis, self-independent entities” (Li, 2019, p. 449).

However, for adhipati to fully bear its soteriological efficacy, it has to karmically connect buddhas with commoners. Indeed, more than mere intersubjective interplays, in Kuiji’s paradigm, the buddha’s ability to correctly perceive other minds through remote ālambana as nonexistent is further illustrated as arising out of the causal, post-subjective interplay subsumed under adhipati:

Buddhas know all dharmas are beyond language, neither nonexisting nor existing. In the remote ālambana, what is grasped [by deluded beings] as [external] objects and as sui generis, self-independent entities, by means of the activating and amplifying influences, is transformed into nonexistent by the [Buddha’s untainted] mind. The essence of [the perceived other mind] really exists, but it resembles nonexistent dharma [for the Buddha]. [The Buddha] knows it is the dharma beyond language. It is neither the same as the semblance of knowledge of deluded commoners nor what is grasped through the said dualistic dharma.

佛知諸法皆性離言, 非無、非有。疎所緣中以所執境為其本質, 增上力故, 心變為無, 體實是有, 相似無法, 知此離言法, 非如凡夫假智, 及言二法所取(T1834.1008c11-20).

In contrast to Xuanzang, who dismisses the charge of solipsism (Lusthaus, 2002, p. 383; Kachru, 2019, p. 63), Kuiji spills much ink to defend Yogācāra against this charge. As clearly shown in the above quote, when Kuiji subsumes adhipati into remote ālambana, he attempts to deploy adhipati to explain how the Buddha’s untainted mind can understand commoners’ delusions without being polluted by them. Had he not established this possibility of communication between the untainted and the tainted, he would have found it difficult to defend the soteriological viability of sharing the Buddha’s ineffable insight with commoners.

Equally important, this quote also demonstrates that, in Kuiji’s paradigm, incommensurability among different lifeworlds is the characteristics of worlds engendered by deluded commoners. As mental afflictions, incommensurability is part of “the semblance of knowledge of deluded commoners,” arising from the core Yogācāra teaching that, for commoners like us, we do not even know our own mind (Kachru, 2021, pp. 159–160). To put it differently, commoners experience “phenomenal transparency,” i.e., we can only know how things appear to consciousness and we do not have direct, immediate access to our own inner states (Westerhoff, 2020, pp. 107–108). For example, we have no direct access to how our neurons process light particles and we only know the end product of that process of seeing an object. Needless to say, this semblance of knowledge or epistemic ignorance can be overcome by bodhisattva practices. The reason is that, to the untainted minds of the buddhas and bodhisattvas, the obstructions of incommensurable worlds are not real (Kachru, 2021, p. 160).

The aforementioned quotation leads to a third point about Kuiji’s commentary on verse 18ab: Kuiji explicitly emphasizes adhipati as the foundation for envisioning how teaching and being taught can happen within the paradigm of consciousness-only. For Kuiji, adhipati undergirds the possibility of the soteriological project that the historical Buddha started: helping others to achieve nirvāṇa through the processes of preaching and hearing. To put it differently, Kuiji deploys adhipati to explain buddhas’ and bodhisattvas’ power to activate and enhance other sentient beings so as to enable sentient beings to achieve enlightenment.

The linking of adhipati with teaching in Kuiji’s commentary has some unique features.Footnote 14 Most notably, at the beginning of Notes20, Kuiji posits that “adhipati enables the Buddha to preach Dharma and relies on the Buddha’s untainted sound, names, and phrases as the essence of teaching” (Ch: zengshang yuan xu fo shuofa 增上緣許佛說法, yi fo wulou shengmingju deng wei qi jiaoti以佛無漏聲名句等為其教體; T1834.979b8-9). He further explains a key function of adhipati, noting that “only the Buddha’s teaching as adhipati can initiate change in the hearers” (T1834.979b12-13). Immediately after making this claim, Kuiji cites verse 18ab as scriptural support for his unique interpretation that effectively conflates ādhipatya with adhipati-pratyaya.Footnote 15

Immediately after collapsing ādhipatya with adhipati-pratyaya, Kuiji quotes from Xuanzang’s CWSL (T1834. 979b15-18). The excerpt from CWSL appears at the beginning of an extensive passage on how buddhas and bodhisattvas figuratively establish (Ch: jiali 假立) names (Ch: ming 名), phrases (Ch: ju 句), and syllables (Ch: zi 字 or wen 文) grounded in sound (Ch: sheng 聲) as a skillful means of advancing the soteriological project through the two kinds of unobstructed knowledge: Dharma and speech (T1585.6b7-9).Footnote 16 Note that, in this passage, both Xuanzang and Kuiji refer to two out of the four abilities of unobstructed understanding and expression (Ch: si wuai jie 四無礙解) in Yogācārabhūmi, an important constellation of doctrines for defending the Buddhist soteriology (T1579.30.47a24-23). Indeed, in one passage, Kuiji moves from adhipati to the possibility of teaching and finally to the centrality of speech, language, and meaning in the Buddha’s soteriological project.

Despite the primacy of oral transmission in both Vasubandhu’s work and Xuanzang’s translation, for Kuiji, this soteriological project is activated through both oral transmission and the composition of treatises like his own written texts. Indeed, in Notes20, immediately after asserting that adhipati enables the buddha to preach Dharma through sounds and so on, Kuiji elevates the status of treatises as follows:

The root of the current treatise is the Buddhist sūtras.

今論之本。謂即佛經 (T1834.979b12).

This statement effectively puts written treatises on the same footing as the Buddha’s speech. Most crucially, like the Buddha’s spoken words, the function of treatises is grounded in their soteriological benefits:

Next, on distinguishing the [textual matrix] upon which this treatise is grounded, this [textual matrix] is missing, [I] follow the discussions in other treatises. In order to make Dharma abide lastingly and to benefit sentient beings, [I] compose [this] treatise.

後辨造論所由者, 然此無文, 准餘論說, 令法久住, 利益有情, 故造論也 (T1834.979b18–19).

As for how this treatise can make Dharma long-lasting and benefit sentient beings, immediately after this passage, Kuiji lists the “mistaken” views of the Sarvāstivāda, Śūnyatādṛṣṭi, Sautrāntika, Mahāsāṃghika, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṃmitīya, and Bhadrayānīya schools that he has refuted in Notes20. The aforementioned passages demonstrate how Kuiji effectively merges scholarship with soteriology, repackaging Indian Yogācārin ontological arguments into a philosophy of successful soteriological actions mediated by adhipati.Footnote 17 Note that Kuiji is by no means the first to endow written text with soteriological efficacy. For example, a story in a text attributed to a Sautrāntika founder Kumāralāta (~ 3rd C.E.) narrates how a brahmin named Kauśika, who was well-versed in Vaiśeṣika and Sāṃkhya philosophies, converted to Buddhism simply by reading a manuscript on pratītyasamutpāda (Bronkhorst, 2011, p. 171). However, Kuiji framing of adhipati stands out as uniquely attuned to the Chinese philosophical inquiry of what constitutes efficacious actions. This shift away from the Indian ontological inquiry into the philosophical investigation of actions and consequences of actions, especially with regard to the soteriological efficacy of written texts, might have contributed to the flourishing Yogācāra commentarial tradition in East Asia.

Kuiji’s use of adhipati to unite scholarship with soteriology also appears prominently in his commentary on CWSL. Similar to Notes20, in Notes30, Kuiji begins by explaining that the essence of the Buddha’s teaching is activated by adhipati. More remarkably, in his lengthy explanation of the essence of the Buddha’s teaching, Kuiji cites verse 18ab of Twenty Verses twice. The first time, he cites it to prove that the Buddha actually said something in contrast to the hidden intention (Ch: miyi 密意) of having nothing to say (T1830.230b23-25). The second time, he cites it to explain precisely why “Dharma and discourses are free from mutual obstructions of comprehension. [But] there are differences in spheres. Dharma depends on [the sphere of] names. Discourses depend on [the sphere of] sound” (T1830.230c24–231a6). Not surprisingly, in explicating this passage, Kuiji again justifies his union of scholarship and soteriology by means of adhipati, ādhipatya, and adhipati-pratyaya. To further explain how syllables can activate the essence of the Buddha’s teaching, Kuiji posits as follows.

Because of the influences of the previous syllable, through mutual and historically sedimented perfuming, [the former syllable] connectively brings forth the latter one. Only at the last moment can [the reader/hearer] understand the meaning. Thereby various afflicted and pure mental events could be transformed. Thusly, even without the existence of past and future, the essence of the Buddha’s teaching is established.

由前字力, 展轉熏習, 連後字生, 於最後時方能解義, 染, 淨等心方乃得轉. 故雖無過未, 而教體亦成 (T1830.231a25-27).

What emerges in the above passage is Kuiji’s persistent effort to explain the soteriological efficacy of teaching with the karmic mechanism of activating and amplifying the influences of sound, names, phrases, and syllables on mental events happening across different lifeworlds.Footnote 18 Again, emphasizing the power of words is very common, but Kuiji’s deployment of adhipati and verse 18ab of Twenty Verses to explain the power of words seems unique.

The aforementioned quote also leads to the last but not least notable point of Kuiji’s theory of adhipati, i.e., the explicit expansion of anyonya and mithaḥ (both mean “mutually”) to include historical sedimentation as in zhanzhuan 展轉, which I translate as “mutually and in a historically sedimented manner.” To be sure, Xuanzang first expanded the karmic mutual unfolding of adhipati to include historical sedimentation when he translated verse 18ab of Twenty Verses but the meaning of historical unfolding remains implicit in both Xuanzang’s translation of Twenty Verses and Kuiji’s Notes20. However, in both Xuanzang’s CWSL and Kuiji’s Notes30, the historical dimension of zhanzhuan becomes explicit. For example, when Xuanzang explains the undefiled seeds in ālayavijñāna, he says they are “transmitted, mutually and in a historically sedimented manner, from the beginningless past” (Ch: cong wushi zhanzhuan chuanlai 從無始展轉傳來; T1585.8b3). When discussing the relations between ālayavijñāna and the first six consciousnesses, Xuanzang explains the dynamic as follows, “they engender each other at all times, mutually and in a historically sedimented manner, and are each other’s cause and effect” (Ch: yu yiqieshi zhanzhuan xiangsheng huwei yingua於一切時展轉相生, 互為因果; T1585.8.c7-8). While Xuanzang deploys zhanzhuan to explain how perfuming by hearing (Skt: śruta-vāsanā; Ch: wenxunxi 聞薰習) works, in Kuiji’s commentary on relevant passages, he explicitly links perfuming by hearing with adhipati. For example, when commenting on Xuanzang’s passage (T1585.9.a14-17) where Xuanzang used zhanzhuan to explain how perfuming functions, Kuiji says,

When hearing true Dharma, because of [the power of] the manifestly functioning contaminated seeds and the contaminated seeds perfumed by one’s own conditions, [they] function as adhipati, which enable the inherent uncontaminated seeds to activate, to amplify, and to grow mutually and in a historically sedimented manner. This is how [perfuming by hearing] functions to activate and amplify the supreme uncontaminated seeds, which will, at a later time, properly awaken the intent to renunciate. It is also called the seeds that activate and amply the uncontaminated. This is named perfuming by hearing.

聞正法時, 由現行有漏及自因緣所熏有漏種, 為增上緣, 令其本有無漏種子亦得增長, 展轉增勝。即以所增無漏勝種, 後時正生出世之心。亦說無漏所增長種, 名聞熏習 (T1830.308b11-16).

There are many more similar phrases. In each case, when Xuanzang uses zhanzhuan to include the notion of historical unfolding, Kuiji in his Notes30 follows suit and further supplements Xuanzang’s points with his deployment of adhipati.

Combining all four points of the quote from Notes20 and reading it together with Xuanzang’s and Kuiji’s writings, the centrality of adhipati to Kuiji’s soteriology becomes evident: adhipati explains both the intersubjective and post-subjective experiences of the karmic processes of teaching and being taught between different mental continuums.

Adhipati and the Power to Dominate Other Minds

However, adhipati allows Kuiji to do more than explaining the soteriological possibility of teaching. It also features prominently in Kuiji’s attempts to explain killing without resorting to mind-independent objects, in verses 19 and 20 of Twenty Verses. Kuiji’s key argument here is that the mental intent to cause harm (Ch: yifa 意罰; Skt: mano-daṇḍa) incurs more severe karmic responsibility than either bodily actions or acts of speaking. On this point, although Kuiji provides detailed descriptions and extensive scriptural sources with regard to the events of mass killing through mental acts cited in Xuanzang’s translation, by and large, Kuiji does not deviate from Vasubandhu’s and Xuanzang’s positions: verses 19 and 20 explain how one mental continuum can terminate another mental continuum without being mediated by mind-independent objects.

The only noticeable difference is that Kuiji repeatedly resorts to adhipati when faced with all questions related to intersubjective causal influences. In both Vasubandhu’s Twenty Verses and Xuanzang’s translation of these passages, adhipati only appears once. But, in Notes20, Kuiji elaborates:

Another explanation is this: this is to reflect and make manifest [the fact that] one’s own consciousnesses are transformed by the power of the activating and amplifying influences and therefore another sentient being is dead. This establishes the truth of consciousness-only. To establish that the other sentient being is killed, it is not necessary to presume that [one’s own consciousnesses] must depend on objects external to/independent of [one’s own] consciousnesses so to directly kill the other sentient being.

又解: 亦即返顯自識轉變增上緣力, 他有情死, 唯識義成。非是要由緣識外境, 親能殺彼, 彼方說死 (T1834.1006a28-b1).Footnote 19

Notably, in the case of killing, unlike the case of teaching, adhipati primarily functions as a force to dominate and terminate. Recall from the previous section that in the case of teaching, Kuiji’s deployment of adhipati connotes the conducive power to activate. Through the power of adhipati, both wholesome dharmas and virtuous friends can activate the wholesome seeds in one’s mental continuum; both unwholesome dharmas and evil friends can activate the unwholesome seeds in one’s mental continuum (T1834.1002b27-c4). However, none of these positive or negative influences of activation has the drastic effect of terminating one’s mental continuum in its current mode of existence. In the case of killing, Kuiji explains death as the total extinction (Ch: duanmie 斷滅) of a mental continuum’s commonality in the current mode of existence (Ch: zhongtongfen 眾同分) due to the mental continuum’s encounter with a hostile adhipati (Ch: zengshang wei yuan 增上違緣) (T1834.1004b11-14). To put it differently, in events of death, adhipati strongly indicates the power to terminate vital functions.

Taken together, the evidence presented in the previous and the current sections demonstrates Kuiji’s unique theory of intersubjective influences. In contrast to earlier Yogācāra doctrines that tend to either reduce self and other into one or fail to distinguish accidental intersubjective agreements from genuine intersubjective karmic influences, Kuiji’s refinement of the Yogācāra model of karmic influence explicitly affirms the existence of other minds and clearly outlines the mechanism undergirding various pre-subjective, intersubjective, and post-subjective dynamics that appear as if they involve mind-independent objects presented to a perceiving subject.

More concretely, Kuiji amplifies the role of adhipati in theorizing causal influences between different mental continuums and their respective lifeworlds. Thereby, Kuiji’s adhipati defends the validity of consciousness-only while accounting for genuine intersubjective interactions. The current study contends that these new doctrinal developments, more than pure philosophical musings about the metaphysical consistency of Yogācāra philosophy, have demonstrated the salient pragmatic attitude in Chinese Yogācāra: Kuiji’s theory of Yogācāra intersubjectivity emerges primarily out of his quest for a soteriology-cum-scholasticism that establishes the Buddha’s words, sounds, and written treatises as actionable reals and the events of teaching and learning as soteriologically efficacious practices.

Conclusion

The current reconstruction of Kuiji’s Yogācāra intersubjectivity has important implications. As is well known, Kuiji’s Yogācāra departs from Xuanzang’s in many aspects and seems to have exerted an outsized influence in the development of Chinese Buddhism (Lusthaus, 2002, pp. 382–426).Footnote 20 Further investigation of Kuiji’s Yogācāra, especially how Kuiji’s theory of intersubjectivity as adhipati-cum-teaching and how his promotion of scholastic compositions may have contributed to the rise of a rich Yogācāra commentarial tradition, merits undertaking. Equally importantly, Kuiji’s Notes30 played an important role in the so-called Yogācāra revival in modern China (Aviv, 2020; Lau, 2013). Furthermore, given the entangled history of Yogācāra, evolutionism, and social theory in modern China (Zu, 2021), it is important to investigate all existing solutions to the problem of intersubjectivity and its broader implications. A clear understanding of Kuiji’s philosophy and soteriology not only recovers the central concerns of Kuiji and his contemporaries but also serves as an important mirror to reflect upon the contemporary society’s naturalized yet unwarranted faith in one single world.