On December 9 at 1 p.m. ET, join William Waldron, professor of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism at Middlebury College and author of Making Sense of Mind-Only: Why Yogacara Matters, to learn more about Yogacara, the highly influential but often misunderstood mind-only school of Mahayana Buddhism.
Contrary to popular belief, Waldron argues, Yogacara does not deny the existence of the external world; instead, it proposes that karma and habitual thought patterns determine how we perceive and interact with the world, urging us to analyze the workings of the mind first on the path to liberation. Rooted in the Nagarjuna’s Madhyamaka school and holding both psychological and ethical implications, Yogacara has had significant impacts on Tibetan and East Asian schools of Buddhism, including Zen.
A longtime scholar-practitioner known for making this high-level topic accessible, Waldron will discuss the basics of Yogacara, why it’s so important, and what gets left out of so many interpretations.
Speakers
William Waldron
William Waldron teaches courses on Indian and Tibetan Buddhism at Middlebury College in Vermont, and sometimes at Rang-jung Yeshe Institute in Kathmandu, Nepal. His work focuses on the classical Yogacara school of Indian Buddhism in dialogue with modern thought. His earlier book, The Buddhist Unconscious: The Ālaya-vijñāna in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought, was published in 2003. His more recent book, Making Sense of Mind-Only (Wisdom, 2023), is the first accessible English introduction to Indian Yogācāra Buddhism. He is currently working on a project on the Five Buddha Families.
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DETAILS
- Date: December 9, 2025
- Time: 1–2 p.m. ET
- Format: Zoom meeting
- Price: Premium subscribers: Free // General admission: $10
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