“According to the Yogācāra perspective, when bodhisattvas have reached the 6th bodhisattva stage they realize (through an argument to be explained shortly) that only mental, but no material entities exist. This rejection of a mind-independent world of objects ‘out there’ also undermines the idea of a substantial subject ‘in here’. As such, for the Yogācārin the entire world, which is ordinarily understood as divided up into distinct subjects that individually perceive a shared world of objects, is simply a causal flow of exclusively mental phenomena lacking any owners.

The Yogācāra mechanism of world-generation is spelled out by a familiar aquatic metaphor. As waves appear on the surface of a great ocean stirred by wind, appearing as separate phenomena, even though they are of the same substance as the ocean, the foundational consciousness, which contains all karmic seeds ever produced by all beings, gives rise to the phenomenal world by its own potential. This world appears to be non-mental in parts, but is in fact wholly mental.”

Jan Westerhoff