Vasubandhu’s teaching of “mind-only” (cittamātra or vijñaptimātra) in Yogācāra presents a radical reorientation of how reality is understood. What ordinarily appears as a world of external objects, standing apart from an inner subject, is reinterpreted as nothing other than mental representation or cognition. This does not deny the presence of experiences themselves; rather, it questions the assumption that there are independently existing objects “out there” corresponding to those experiences. All that is directly given is the flow of appearances in consciousness, while the notion of external things is a construction of that very consciousness.

Within this perspective, the duality of subject and object is seen as empty, a conceptual fabrication rather than an ultimate feature of reality. Yogācāra explains this by speaking of a stream of consciousness structured by karmic “seeds” (bīja) stored in the ālaya-vijñāna, or storehouse consciousness. These latent impressions ripen into particular perceptions and situations, accounting for continuity across lives and for the fact that beings in similar circumstances can experience very different worlds. The “world” is thus understood as a dependently arisen pattern of cognitions, shaped by both individual and collective karma, rather than as a set of self-existing entities.

This doctrine also serves a deeply practical and therapeutic function. Suffering arises when mental constructs are misinterpreted as solid, external realities and when a reified self is set in opposition to them. By realizing that what is grasped as external objects and as an independent self are merely dependently arisen appearances in consciousness, attachment and aversion begin to loosen. The Yogācāra path is described as a “transformation of the basis” (āśraya-parāvṛtti), in which the deluded, dualistic flow of consciousness is transformed into non-dual wisdom. In this way, “mind-only” becomes not a speculative metaphysical claim, but a method for reconfiguring experience so that liberation from suffering becomes possible.