Within the Yogācāra tradition, Vasubandhu is remembered above all for a small cluster of works that distill and systematize the “consciousness-only” vision. Foremost among these are the *Vijñaptimātratā‑viṃśikā* (Twenty Verses on Consciousness‑Only) and the *Vijñaptimātratā‑triṃśikā* (Thirty Verses on Consciousness‑Only). These concise compositions articulate the thesis that what is ordinarily taken as an external world is, at the deepest level, nothing other than consciousness and its representations. They also lay out, in a highly compressed form, key Yogācāra themes such as the analysis of consciousness into distinct types and the transformation of consciousness along the path. For later Yogācāra thinkers, especially in East Asia, the Thirty Verses in particular became a touchstone for commentary and reflection, serving almost as a seed-text from which an entire philosophical tradition could unfold.

Alongside these verse treatises, several shorter works attributed to Vasubandhu apply Yogācāra insights to specific doctrinal domains. The *Karmasiddhi‑prakaraṇa* (Treatise on the Establishment of Karma) explores how karmic causality can be understood when experience is framed as consciousness-only, clarifying how deeds leave traces and ripen within the continuum of mind. The *Pañcaskandha‑prakaraṇa* (Treatise on the Five Aggregates) re-reads the classic Buddhist analysis of personhood—form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness—through a Yogācāra lens, showing how these aggregates are themselves patterns within consciousness. In this way, Vasubandhu’s Yogācāra writings do not merely assert a doctrine; they patiently re-interpret inherited categories so that the “consciousness-only” perspective permeates the understanding of karma, personality, and the path.

A further dimension of Vasubandhu’s importance for Yogācāra lies in the way his broader scholastic work intersects with this vision. The *Abhidharmakośabhāṣya*, though fundamentally an Abhidharma commentary, contains analyses of mental factors and consciousness that later Yogācārins could appropriate and deepen. It thus stands as a kind of bridge between earlier Abhidharma systematization and the more explicitly Yogācāra treatises. Taken together, these works show a thinker intent on re-grounding Buddhist doctrine in a careful examination of mind, using both terse verses and more discursive treatises to illuminate how consciousness shapes, and ultimately liberates, experience.