Yogācāra’s teaching of “mind-only” (cittamātra / vijñaptimātra) continues to function as a subtle but powerful undercurrent in many living Buddhist traditions. In Tibetan Buddhism it remains part of the standard philosophical curriculum, where its analysis of consciousness, the storehouse mind (ālaya-vijñāna), and latent “seeds” (bīja) is used to clarify karma, rebirth, dream and bardo experience, and the transformation of mind along the path. In East Asian Buddhism, especially Chinese, Korean, and Japanese lineages, Yogācāra has shaped Chan/Zen, Pure Land, and related schools, so that teachings on “mind-only Pure Land” or the reading of Buddhalands and hells as inner states rest upon its vision of reality as cognitively constructed. Even where Madhyamaka is doctrinally preferred, Yogācāra often supplies the working psychology through which practice and realization are explained.

This emphasis on the constructed nature of experience deeply informs contemporary meditation and mindfulness instruction. Yogācāra’s analysis of the eight consciousnesses and associated mental factors offers a map for seeing how subject–object duality is fabricated by habitual patterns, and how practice can reach beyond surface thoughts to transform underlying conditioning in the storehouse consciousness. Modern teachers draw on this to explain how karmic “seeds” ripen as emotional reactivity and fixed views, and how careful attention can interrupt these patterns. Such a perspective naturally strengthens an ethic of mental cultivation: if experience is co-created by consciousness, then transforming intention, attention, and perception becomes central to alleviating suffering.

Yogācāra also plays a significant role in dialogue with psychology, philosophy, and therapeutic work. Its account of cognitive representation and the storehouse consciousness has been used to articulate a Buddhist understanding of perception and mental processes that resonates with discussions of unconscious tendencies and the brain’s constructive role in experience. Buddhist-informed psychotherapy and psychological reflection often rely on Yogācāra’s detailed analysis of how mental formations generate recurring patterns of suffering, using this as a framework for understanding and reshaping deeply rooted habits. In this way, Yogācāra serves as a bridge between classical Buddhist thought and contemporary explorations of the mind.

At the same time, contemporary interpreters are careful to clarify what “mind-only” does and does not mean. Yogācāra is not presented as a naïve solipsism, but as a radical analysis of the inseparability of knower and known within lived experience, converging with other Mahāyāna approaches in its deconstruction of inherent existence. This has important ethical and spiritual consequences: if greed, hatred, and delusion are sustained by shared cognitive and affective habits, then inner transformation and compassionate, socially engaged action are seen as mutually reinforcing. Many modern teachings that speak of “not seeing the world as it is, but as one is,” or that encourage “changing the mind to change the world,” quietly rest upon this Yogācāra-inspired vision of consciousness as the dynamic ground of the worlds beings inhabit.