One of the Six Schools of Nara Buddhism in Japan, this school consisted of scholar-monks whose primary concern was the texts and doctrines of the Fa-hsiang school of China (of which Hossō is the Japanese pronunciation). Their philosophy was also known as yuishiki, or ‘consciousness-only’, because of its fundamental belief that all of reality, including both the objective world and the subjective mind that regards it, are but evolutions of consciousness according to karma. The school was transmitted to Japan by Japanese clerics who studied in China with Fa-hsiang masters such as Hsüan-tsang and K'uei-chi, and became one of the most powerful of the six Nara schools. See also citta-mātra; yogācāra; vijñapti-mātra.
