🗄️Asaṅga (असङ्ग)

c. 300–370 CE · Indo-Tibetan Buddhism · Prominent

Asanga was an Indian Mahayana monk and philosopher who founded the Yogacara school with his half-brother Vasubandhu. The object you grasp and the you that grasps it are both constructions laid over a flow of consciousness. A storehouse consciousness sits beneath them, where the residue of past acts collects until it ripens into fresh experience. Liberation transforms that basis into Buddhahood, and only a wisdom free of concepts reaches things as they are.

Signature

The position Asanga is most identified with in the Profiler:

Mind

leans Beyond Brain

Beginning of Things

Mind-Only

Positions on the 2 axes the sources answer

Mind

leans Beyond Brain (85 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)

Identity

strongly leans Changing (100 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)

18 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Asanga refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.

Foundational questions

Good and Evil

Karmic Balance
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil?

End of Things

Final Liberation
What is the ultimate end of all things?

Perception

Conceptual Mediation / Idealism
What do we directly perceive?

Ethics Basis

Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics?

Agency

Karmic Causation
What is the nature of human agency and freedom?

Beginning of Things

Mind-Only
What is the origin of reality?

Language

Conventional
What is the fundamental nature of language?

Paradox

Apophatic Pointer
What is the status of paradox?

Death

Karmic Cycle
What happens at death?

Human Nature

No-Self
What is human nature?

Primary Bond

All Beings
What is your primary bond and loyalty?

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