Can Ultimate Reality Change? The Three Natures/Three Characters Doctrine in Indian Yogacara Literature and Contemporary Scholarship

This article focuses on the three natures (trisvabhava) or three characters (trilaksa?a) doctrine as described in Indian Yogacara treatises. This concept is fundamental to Yogacara epistemology and soteriology, but terminology employed by contemporary buddhologists misconstrues and misrepresents some of its most important features, particularly with regard to the 'ultimately real nature' (parinispanna-svabhava), which is equated with terms that connote ultimate reality like ultimate truth (paramartha), emptiness (sunyata), and reality limit (bhuta-ko?i), and which is described as a 'purifying object of observation' (visuddhalambana) that facilitates insight when properly understood by meditators. The article discusses how it is described in a range of Yogacara treatises and compares this with how it has been conceived in academic studies of Indic Yogacara literature.