Karma, Intersubjectivity, and Collectivity in Buddhist Thought

Abstract: This essay presents an early Yogācāra view of karma as both an individual and collective affair. Framing its discussion of karma in terms of three distinct Buddhist scopes, or frameworks for investigating karma, it introduces the idea of a distinctive early Yogācāra framework for karma, called the vijñapti scope. Grounding its exposition of the vijñapti scope in the Mahāyānsaṃgraha , the essay argues that within the vijñapti scope, all beings in a shared lifeworld share a subjectivity with regard to that lifeworld and that by virtue of this intersubjectivity they also share karmic burdens that manifest as the shared space of the lifeworld.