Establishing the Ideology of Vijñānavāda

The Mahāyāna Buddhism is divided into “Empty Sect” and “Existence Sect”. The existence sect is also known as Consciousness-only or Mind-only school (Vijñānavāda). On the one hand, the consciousness-only school explains that everything in the world are created by consciousness and therefore they are illusory, false, and empty, on the other hand it talks pure tathatā is true perfection. Due to such unique qualities, consciousness-only school is considered as superior to other Buddhist schools. According to the texts, consciousness-only is a kind of ability, it does not only hold consciousness ability but it also possesses the function of consciousness. If one assumes it as mechanical system then the knowledge ability is identification ability within environment. The consciousness ability is used to detect state of environment; it is alternative to the mechanism of the action. Among them, the state is not identified, detected correspondence between the identification function, this mechanism is called resistance. For example, my habits of dressing me, driving, sleeping, and eating, each habit presents a mechanism of recognition. Every habit represents mechanism; every mechanic habit possesses the nature of mechanism. It differs in respect of people, things and time. This paper uses the mechanism method to interpret the content of consciousness-only texts and intend to expand its ideology. The main idea of the former interpretation is based on “what is consciousness?” whereas the latter is based on use consciousness.