Consciousness-Only

No. Although Consciousness-only doctrine emphasizes mind, it does not deny the existence of either matter or objective phenomena. If these were negated, then everything should be negated, including consciousness, and there would be no consciousness to emphasize. In fact, philosophical idealism can be interpreted to encompass almost everything except materialism. For example, George Berkeley (1685–1753) can be considered a subjective idealist. Georg Hegel (1770–1831) may be regarded as an objective idealist, and Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) a volitional idealist. William James (1842–1910) may be considered an empirical idealist, and Henri-Louis Bergson (1859–1941) an intuitive idealist. And Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) can be classified as a skeptical idealist.     In brief, any form of idealism will require the specification of some normative standard to serve as the basis for its theories. Once they select some adored criterion or ideal, philosophers inevitably make the mistake of over-generalizing from a partial truth. The skeptical idealists are more open-minded, but they cannot provide an ultimate answer for guidance, leaving people feeling anxious and paralyzed. The Consciousness-only school of Buddhism does say that “the three realms are merely consciousness,” meaning all phenomena within the three realms are manifested by the eighth consciousness. That is to say, all physical phenomena, everything in the non-sentient world (qijie), are the objective aspect (xiangfen), or active dharmas, of the eighth consciousness. The theory does not, however, deny the existence of sentient beings outside the individual self.   The claim that “the three realms are merely consciousness” only says that all phenomena within the three realms are jointly produced by the eighth consciousnesses of all sentient beings within the three realms; that is, phenomena are produced by sentient beings’ coll