A Review of Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogacara Buddhism and the Ch'eng Wei-Shih Lun (Book Review‪)‬

Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogacara Buddhism and the Ch'eng Wei-shih Lun. By Dan Lusthaus. Curzon Critical Studies in Buddhism Series. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002, xii + 611 pages, ISBN: 0-7007-1186-4 (hardcover), US $65.00. This book is an expanded version of Dan Lusthaus's Temple University dissertation (1989). It is built around Vasubandhu's Trimsika (Thirty Stanzas) and its Chinese exegesis in the Cheng weishi lun, composed in mid seventh century China by Xuanzang. Buddhist Phenomenology explores two major theses: first, it endeavors to establish that classical Yogacara is a phenomenological and epistemological investigation of Buddhist questions concerning human existence and is not a form of metaphysical or ontological idealism; second, it tries to show that classical Yogacara thought evinces a much stronger continuity with earlier lines of Buddhist thought than often assumed. (1)