What is "vasubandhu"

Vasubandhu ( Sanskrit; ; ) ( fl. 4th to 5th century C.E.) was a very influential Buddhist monk and scholar from Gandhara. Vasubandhu was a philosopher who wrote on the Abhidharma from the perspectives of the Sarvastivada and Sautrāntika schools. Along with his half-brother Asanga, he was also one of the main founders of the Yogacara school after his conversion to Mahayana Buddhism.

Vasubandhu's Commentary on the Treasury of the Abhidharma (Abhidharmakośabhāṣya) is widely used in Tibetan and East Asian Buddhism as the major source for non-Mahayana Abhidharma philosophy. His philosophical verse works set forth the standard for the Indian Yogacara metaphysics of "appearance only" (vijñapti-mātra), which has been described as a form of "epistemological idealism", phenomenology and close to Kant's Transcendental Idealism. Apart from this, he wrote several commentaries, works on logic, argumentation and devotional poetry.

Vasubandhu is one of the most influential thinkers in the Indian Buddhist philosophical tradition. In Jōdo Shinshū, he is considered the Second Patriarch and in Chan Buddhism, he is the 21st Patriarch.