Mind-only / cognition-only

"Mind-only" or "cognition-only" (Sanskrit vijñaptimātra, "nothing but representation"; the school is often called Cittamātra, "mind-only") is a signature thesis of the Yogācāra school, developed within Mahāyāna Buddhism around the 4th century CE. The Mahāyāna is the later, broad form of Buddhism organized around the bodhisattva ideal — seeking full awakening to benefit all beings. Yogācāra grew partly out of close attention to meditative experience, where the mind's role in shaping what we perceive becomes vivid.

The claim is that the objects we take to be solid things "out there," independent of any mind, are better understood as appearances arising within consciousness itself. The favorite analogy is the dream: in a dream you see mountains, people, danger — all utterly convincing — yet none of it exists apart from the dreaming mind. Yogācāra suggests our waking world is, in a comparable way, a structured display of mind, even if a far more stable and shared one.

What Mind-only does and doesn't say is easy to garble, so it's worth care. It is not the cheerful claim that you personally invent reality or can wish things into being; the appearances follow strict patterns set by past conditioning. And whether Yogācāra meant a strong "only minds exist" idealism, or a subtler point — that we can never reach objects except as already interpreted by mind — was debated then and is debated by scholars now. That is why it is marked as a contested teaching, held by some Buddhist schools and challenged by others.