"The Yogācāra, or Yoga Practice, school is one of the two schools of Mahāyāna Buddhism that developed in the early centuries of the common era. Though it arose in India, Mahāyāna Buddhism now flourishes in China, Tibet, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. While the other major Mahāyāna tradition, the Madhyamaka (Middle Way), focuses on the concept of emptiness-that all phenomena lack an intrinsic essence-the Yogācāra school focuses on the cognitive processes whereby we impute such essences. Through everyday examples and analogues in cognitive science, author William Waldron makes Yogācāra's core teachings-on the three turnings of the Dharma wheel, the three natures, the storehouse consciousness, and mere perception-accessible to a broad audience. In contrast to the common characterization of Yogācāra as philosophical idealism, Waldron presents Yogācāra Buddhism on its own terms, as a coherent system of ideas and practices, with dependent arising its guiding principle. The first half of Making Sense of Mind Only explores the historical context for Yogācāra's development. Waldron examines early Buddhist texts that show how our affective and cognitive processes shape the way objects and worlds appear to us, and how we erroneously grasp onto them as essentially real-perpetuating the habits that bind us to saṃsāra. He then analyzes the early Madhyamaka critique of essences. This context sets the stage for the book's second half, an examination of how Yogācāra texts such as the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra and Asaṅga's Stages of Yogic Practice (Yogācārabhūmi) build upon these earlier ideas by arguing that our constructive processes also occur unconsciously. Not only do we collectively, yet mostly unknowingly, construct shared realities or cultures, our shared worlds are also mediated through the storehouse consciousness (ālayavijñāna) functioning as a cultural unconscious. Vasubandhu's Twenty Verses argues that we can learn to recognize such objects and worlds as "mere perceptions" (vijñāptimātra) and thereby abandon our enchantment with the products of our own cognitive processes. Finally Maitreya's Distinguishing Phenomena from Their Ultimate Nature (Dharmadharmatāvibhāga) elegantly lays out the Mahāyāna path to this transformation. In Waldron's hands, Yogācāra is no mere view but a practical system of transformation. His presentation of its key texts and ideas illuminates how religion can remain urgent and vital in our scientific and pluralistic age"--