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Buddhist philosophy

Buddhist views reminiscent of idealism appear in Mahayana scriptures like the Explanation of the Profound Secrets, Descent into Laṅka, and Ten Stages Sutra. These theories, known as "mind-only" (cittamatra) or "the consciousness doctrine" (vijñanavada) were mostly associated with the Indian Buddhist philosophers of the Yogācāra school and the related epistemological school (Pramāṇavāda). These figures include: Vasubandhu, Asaṅga, Dignāga, Dharmakīrti, Sthiramati, Dharmapāla, Jñānaśrīmitra, Śaṅkaranandana, and Ratnākaraśānti. Their arguments were a lively subject of debate for Buddhist and non-Buddhist philosophers in India for centuries. These discussions had a lasting influence on the later Buddhist philosophy of East Asian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism.

There is some modern scholarly disagreement about whether Indian Yogācāra Buddhism can be said to be a form of idealism. Some writers like philosopher Jay Garfield and German philologist Lambert Schmithausen argue that Indian Yogacarins are metaphysical idealists that reject the existence of a mind independent external world. Others see them as closer to an epistemic idealist like Kant who holds that our knowledge of the world is simply knowledge of our own concepts and perceptions. However, a major difference here is that while Kant holds that the thing-in-itself is unknowable, Indian Yogacarins held that ultimate reality is knowable, but only through the non-conceptual yogic perception of a highly trained meditative mind. Other scholars like Dan Lusthaus and Thomas Kochumuttom see Yogācāra as a kind of phenomenology of experience which seeks to understand how suffering (dukkha) arises in the mind, not provide a metaphysics.