Ekaggatā

I. Problem Setting

1.1 Carry-over from the preceding paper

P03 closed with a circumscribed finding: the recollection of one's own ethical conduct stops at access concentration and does not reach absorption, and the reason given by Buddhaghosa at Visuddhimagga VII §4 is twofold — the depth of what is recollected and the practitioner's inclination to recollect virtues of many kinds. Both reasons, P03 argued, are features of the object, not of the practitioner. The ceiling is constitutive of what sīlānussati is: an irreducible function performed at access-level concentration, completed within access, asking neither for absorption nor for any further pressure on the practitioner's effort. The next question presents itself without strain. If the ceiling of sīlānussati is owed to the structure of its object — an eight-fold ethical content, plural in kind — is the same explanation extensible to the other recollections, and beyond them to the entire taxonomy of forty meditation subjects (cattāḷīsa kammaṭṭhānāni) that Buddhaghosa lays out in Visuddhimagga Chapter III?

1.2 The generalisation

The present paper answers in the affirmative. The two reasons named at Chapter VII §4 are not special features of sīla; they are special features of any object that is structurally multiple — any object the practitioner must hold across several distinguishable items at once. Wherever an object exhibits that shape, the recollection or contemplation built on it reaches access and halts. Wherever an object exhibits the opposite shape — single, homogeneous, perceptually one — the contemplation built on it admits the progressive refinement that ends in absorption. The cross-cutting partition lies in the object, not in the practice-name. P03 supplies the why for the special case; the present paper extracts the universal rule and reads the whole forty-kammaṭṭhāna taxonomy through it.

1.3 The Chinese title and its register self-awareness

A note on translation register is owed at the outset. The Chinese term 心一境性 (literally "mind-one-object-nature"), which the present paper uses as its anchor, is itself a seventh-century post-canonical technical translation standardised by Xuanzang (玄奘, c. 600–664) in the Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra and adjacent Yogācāra treatises. The earlier Chinese canonical strata do not use it. The fifth-century Saṃyukta-āgama (T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, trans. Guṇabhadra, c. 435–443) and the late fourth-century Madhyama Āgama (T0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗, trans. Saṅghadeva, c. 397–398) render the same underlying Pāli phrase as 內淨一心 ("inner-purified one-mind") and 內靜一心 ("inner-stilled one-mind") respectively, with 一心 ("one-mind") as the shared core. The Pāli pericope from which both Chinese renderings derive uses cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ ("mind at one"), not ekaggatā (the abstract noun) directly. The choice to use 心一境性 as this paper's title is therefore deliberate: it places the argument on the Yogācāra register — the abhidharmic systematisation of a doctrine the sutta layer had stated less abstractly — while keeping the earlier Chinese 一心 and the underlying Pāli cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ in explicit view. A reader who carries the seventh-century term back into the sutta layer without that signposting misreads three centuries of translation work as if it were a single uniform vocabulary. The present paper foregrounds the layering.

1.4 The sutta-jhāna debate, bracketed

A second clarification on scope is owed. The last three decades have produced a substantial Western scholarly debate over whether the jhāna of the suttas is identical with, weaker than, or otherwise distinct from the jhāna of the Visuddhimagga (Brasington 2015, Shankman 2008, the writings of Ajahn Brahmali and Bhante Sujato, among others). The present paper does not enter that debate. Its thesis is placed upstream of the contested point: whatever the precise altitude or phenomenology of jhāna is taken to be, the Visuddhimagga's Chapters III and IV partition meditation subjects by the structure of their objects in a way that stands stable across both readings. A single-homogeneous kasiṇa admits a progressive sign-refinement that reaches absorption; an eight-fold ethical recollection does not. The partition does not depend on which side of the sutta-jhāna debate the reader stands. §IV.4 will register the debate as an open background; it is not engaged here.

1.5 Part I closer and the forward link

The present paper closes Part I of the SĪLA volume. The four-paper architecture of that Part can now be stated as a four-step progression of one continuous reading: P01 distinguished the three axes of ethical conduct — sīla, saṃvara, vinaya; P02 read the eight virtues led by akhaṇḍa on the subject-side as the noble disciple's attribute-content in the four-limb stream-entry formula; P03 read the same eight virtues on the object-side as the content the disciple reflexively recollects; P04 generalises the object-side reading from the special case of sīla to the entire forty-kammaṭṭhāna taxonomy as the universal object-structure constraint. With the universal constraint in place, the SĪLA volume hands forward to SAMĀDHI: the operational layer of individual meditation subjects, the practical specifics of how a single-homogeneous object is brought through the sign-progression to absorption, belongs to that next volume's main scene. The present paper closes a doctrinal frame; the practice belongs to what follows.

Two anchors, one canonical and one commentarial, should sit visibly at the head of the argument. The Pāli is the second-jhāna pericope shared by Dīgha Nikāya 22 and Majjhima Nikāya 10:

Vitakkavicārānaṁ vūpasamā ajjhattaṁ sampasādanaṁ cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ avitakkaṁ avicāraṁ samādhijaṁ pītisukhaṁ dutiyaṁ jhānaṁ upasampajja viharati.¹

Bhante Sujato's public-domain rendering:

"…they enter and remain in the second absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of immersion, with internal clarity and mind at one, without placing the mind and keeping it connected."²

The Chinese-Yogācāra anchor is the Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra's definition at fascicle 11:

「三摩地者，謂於所緣審正觀察，心一境性。」 ("Concentration is, with regard to an object, scrutinised observation, mental one-pointedness.")³

The three words 於所緣 ("with regard to an object") are not modifier but grammatical condition: the object is not background to samādhi; it is the necessary correlate without which samādhi does not occur. The Yogācāra definition states in one sentence what the present paper expands across five sections.

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II. Canonical Sources

2.1 The Pāli axis: the second-jhāna pericope and the verbal cascade

The Pāli canon's testimony to mental one-pointedness comes in two registers — a nominal register that names the unifying factor and a verbal register that describes how the mind comes to be unified. The nominal anchor is the second-jhāna pericope (DN 22 §858–868; MN 10 mirror, identical wording), already cited at §I.5 above. The same pericope recurs across both the Dīgha and Majjhima statements of right concentration (sammā-samādhi), and the phrase cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ — Sujato's "mind at one" — marks, from the second jhāna onward, the stable element that persists when initial application (vitakka) and sustained application (vicāra) fall away. The four-jhāna pericope thus places mental one-pointedness as the continuing factor across the higher jhānas, not as a feature of the first alone.

A philological caveat is owed. The pericope does not in fact use the abstract noun ekaggatā (or its compound cittass'ekaggatā); it uses cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ. The identification of ekodibhāva with ekaggatā is a commentarial step, executed by Buddhaghosa at Visuddhimagga Chapter III and Chapter IV, where the two terms are treated as equivalent. The present paper inherits that identification with the Visuddhimagga, but signals the move rather than collapsing the two layers: in the sutta pericope, the term is ekodibhāva; the abstract-noun anchor ekaggatā — eventually to be standardised into Chinese as 心一境性 — is properly a commentarial term picked up by the entire Theravāda Abhidhamma stream and, on the Mahāyāna side, by the Yogācāra treatises Xuanzang would later translate.

The verbal register supplies a complementary anchor. AN 6.10, the Mahānāmasutta, closes its six-recollection pericope with a five-step ascending chain that culminates in the verb-form cittaṁ samādhiyati ("the mind enters concentration," literally "the mind is concentrated"):

Pamuditassa pīti jāyati, pītimanassa kāyo passambhati, passaddhakāyo sukhaṁ vediyati, sukhino cittaṁ samādhiyati.⁴

The five steps — joy (pāmojja), rapture (pīti), tranquility (passaddhi), bliss (sukha), concentration (samādhi) — recur unchanged across all six recollections (Buddha, Dhamma, Saṅgha, sīla, cāga, devatā), repeated six times in the canonical pericope, and a near-identical formulation appears at AN 11.11 (Paṭhamamahānāma) and AN 4.14 (where the concentration-factor samādhi-sambojjhaṅga is placed as the sixth of the seven awakening-factors, slotting one-pointedness structurally into the bodhi-pakkhiya architecture). The cascade form's significance for the present paper is that it gives mental one-pointedness as a psychological process rather than as a static factor — the mind is brought into concentration through a sequence whose earlier links are themselves natural emergences from one another. The implications of this verbal-process register will return in §VI.

2.2 The Chinese axis: 內淨一心 and 內靜一心

The Chinese side of the canon preserves the same pericope under two near-identical translations from two distinct translator-traditions of the fourth and fifth centuries. The Saṃyukta-āgama (T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗), translated under the patronage of the Liu-Song court by Guṇabhadra (求那跋陀羅) between approximately 435 and 443 CE, renders the second-jhāna formula at five locations across multiple fascicles:

「離有覺有觀，內淨一心，無覺無觀，定生喜樂，具足第二禪……」 ("Separated from applied and sustained thought, with inner purity and one-mind, without applied or sustained thought, with joy and bliss born of concentration, one attains and dwells in the second jhāna.")⁵

The five locations distribute across distinct narrative settings — the Susīma dialogue (fascicle 14, on the relation between insight and the jhānas), the food-and-no-food twelvefold-arising material (fascicle 17), the Mahāmaudgalyāyana noble-silence episode (fascicle 18), the Citra householder petition (fascicle 21), and the five-aggregates contemplation (fascicle 31). The repetition across five sites, in five different conversational frames, attested in one continuous translation programme, secures 內淨一心 as Guṇabhadra's stable Chinese rendering rather than as a one-off variant. The three characters carry the Pāli pericope across the translation interface: 內 corresponds to ajjhattaṁ (inwardly), 淨 to sampasādanaṁ (purity, clarity), and 一心 to cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ (mind at one). The decisive philological fact is the third graph-pair: 一心 ("one-mind") is the Chinese-side correspondent to the Pāli ekodibhāva and, by the commentarial identification, to ekaggatā.

The cross-translator witness comes from the Madhyama Āgama (T0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗), translated by Saṅghadeva (僧伽提婆) in the Eastern Jin period, approximately 397–398 CE, at fascicle 25:

「彼覺、觀已息，內靜一心，無覺、無觀，定生喜、樂，得第二禪成就遊。」 ("When that one's applied and sustained thought have ceased, with inner stillness and one-mind, without applied or sustained thought, with joy and bliss born of concentration, one attains and dwells in the second jhāna.")⁶

The single graph that differs from Guṇabhadra's rendering — 靜 ("stilled, quiescent") in place of 淨 ("purified, clear") — registers a permissible translation variant for sampasādanaṁ, which carries both senses in Pāli. The decisive identity is the unchanged 一心. Two translators, two translation venues, two distinct ancestor recensions (the Saṃyukta-āgama descending from a Sarvāstivāda-affiliated transmission, the Madhyama Āgama from a related but distinguishable Sarvāstivāda recension), preserve "one-mind" as the Chinese rendering for cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ / ekaggatā in the second-jhāna pericope. The cross-translator stability is the documentary base of the present paper's reading: the term 一心, in the Chinese canonical layer, is not a stylistic preference but a structural correspondent settled across two independent translator-traditions.

2.3 The commentarial axis: Visuddhimagga Chapters III, IV, and VII

The systematic abhidhammic framing of the partition belongs to the Visuddhimagga. Chapter III (Kammaṭṭhāna-niddesa, the exposition of meditation subjects) lays out the forty kammaṭṭhāna and surveys their classification along several axes, including the axis of which subjects admit access concentration only and which admit full absorption. Chapter IV (Paṭhavī-kasiṇa-niddesa, the exposition of the earth kasiṇa) gives the exemplary case for an absorption-admitting subject: a uniform earth disk, single in colour and texture, presented to the eye and then progressively interiorised through the three signs (the cognitive mechanism returned to in §V.2). Chapter VII §4 (Sīlānussati-niddesa, the exposition of the recollection of ethical conduct) gives the access-only verdict for the sīla recollection, with the two reasons P03 quoted: the depth of the virtues recollected and the inclination to recollect virtues of many kinds.

A citation caveat is owed. The present author's working Pāli corpus does not include verbatim digital text for Chapters III and IV of the Visuddhimagga (the relevant GRETIL files carry a publication-restricted license and have not been embedded); the references in this paper are therefore made at chapter-section level — by chapter name and by the section heading from Ñāṇamoli's published English translation — without paragraph numbering. Paragraph-level citation is pending physical consultation with the Buddhist Publication Society's fourth edition of Ñāṇamoli's The Path of Purification; readers seeking that precision should consult Ñāṇamoli directly. The chapter-name citations as deployed below are sufficient to identify the textual locus without making philological claims the present working corpus cannot support.

2.4 Five further Pāli witnesses, cited but not quoted

Five further sutta loci are central to the abhidharmic treatment of ekaggatā / cittass'ekaggatā and are listed here as canonical witnesses for the present argument, though the author's working corpus does not contain their texts and the present paper accordingly cites them by PTS reference only, without verbatim quotation:

• Cūḷavedalla-sutta, MN 44 (PTS MN i 301), in which the nun Dhammadinnā gives the famous short definition: "what is concentration? — mental one-pointedness" (cittass'ekaggatā yo samādhi).
• Samādhindriya-sutta, SN 48.9–10 (PTS SN v 197–198), on the placement of ekaggatā in the analysis of the concentration-faculty among the five spiritual faculties.
• Saṅgīti-sutta, DN 33 (PTS DN iii 207ff), which places ekaggatā in its Dhamma-numerical listings of doctrinal items.
• Samādhibhāvanā-sutta, AN 4.41 (PTS AN ii 44), which enumerates four developments of samādhi by four distinct functional aims.
• Samādhi-sutta, AN 5.27 (PTS AN iii 24), which carries a closely related short definition of samādhi as cittass'ekaggatā.

These citations stand here as PTS-located witnesses to the canonical embedding of the term, and the reader seeking primary text should consult Bhikkhu Bodhi's translations — the Middle Length Discourses (Wisdom 1995/2009), the Connected Discourses (Wisdom 2000), and the Numerical Discourses (Wisdom 2012) — each of which includes the Pāli text alongside its English rendering and a substantial scholarly introduction.⁷ The present paper holds itself to a strict discipline of not reconstructing verbatim Pāli from memory or secondary paraphrase: the absent witnesses are noted by reference, not approximated by improvisation.

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III. The Yogācāra Systematization

3.1 The Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra definition

The most condensed Chinese formulation of mental one-pointedness as a technical doctrinal item comes from Xuanzang's translation of the Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra (T1579《瑜伽師地論》Yogācārabhūmi-śāstraT30, No. 1579Xuanzang (Tang, 646–648 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗, attributed to Maitreya and Asaṅga, translated in the years following Xuanzang's return from India in 645). At fascicle 11:

「三摩地者，謂於所緣審正觀察，心一境性。世尊於無漏方便中，先說三摩地，後說解脫。由三摩地善成滿力，於諸煩惱心永解脫故。」 ("Concentration is, with regard to an object, scrutinised observation, mental one-pointedness. The World-Honoured One, among the means of non-affliction, first taught concentration and then taught liberation. By the well-completed force of concentration, the mind permanently liberates from defilements.")⁸

The grammatical structure of the first clause is the philosophical kernel. Samādhi is the term defined; 於所緣 ("with regard to an object," rendering ālambana or ārammaṇa) is the prepositional condition; 審正觀察 ("scrutinised observation") names the cognitive operation; 心一境性 ("mental one-pointedness") names the structural result. The placement of 於所緣 is grammatically non-deletable: the definition does not say that samādhi incidentally happens to involve an object; it says that samādhi is the operation that occurs when scrutinised observation holds an object in one-pointed unification. The Chinese formulation, in a single sentence, registers the doctrine the present paper articulates across the whole of §V: mental one-pointedness is not a property of the mind in isolation; it is a relational property obtaining between mind and a particular object-structure. Without an object, no samādhi; without a particular object-shape, no particular samādhi-quality.

3.2 The four-jhāna five-factor structure

A second passage in the same fascicle places mental one-pointedness across the four jhānas with explicit factor-by-factor enumeration:

「於初靜慮具足五支：一、尋，二、伺，三、喜，四、樂，五、心一境性。第二靜慮有四支：一、內等淨，二、喜，三、樂，四、心一境性。第三靜慮有五支：一、捨，二、念，三、正知，四、樂，五、心一境性。第四靜慮有四支：一、捨清淨，二、念清淨，三、不苦不樂受，四、心一境性。」 ("The first jhāna has five factors: applied thought, sustained thought, rapture, bliss, mental one-pointedness. The second jhāna has four factors: inner equanimity-clarity, rapture, bliss, mental one-pointedness. The third jhāna has five factors: equanimity, mindfulness, full awareness, bliss, mental one-pointedness. The fourth jhāna has four factors: pure equanimity, pure mindfulness, neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling, mental one-pointedness.")⁹

Across the four jhānas, only one factor recurs unchanged: 心一境性. Applied and sustained thought fall away at the transition to the second jhāna; rapture falls away at the third; bliss falls away at the fourth (replaced by neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling). Mental one-pointedness persists from the first jhāna through the fourth. This is not an incidental concurrence; it is the Yogācārabhūmi's structural argument for the identity of jhāna-as-such. What makes a jhāna a jhāna, the factor enumeration says, is the unbroken thread of mental one-pointedness running through every altitude. Everything else — the applied thought, the rapture, the bliss — is contingent decoration.

3.3 The intrinsic-nature limb (svabhāva-aṅga)

Sthiramati's Abhidharma-samuccaya-vyākhyā (T1606《大乘阿毘達磨雜集論》Abhidharmasamuccaya-vyākhyāT31, No. 1606View on CBETA online reader ↗, the commentarial elaboration of Asaṅga's Abhidharma-samuccaya, also Xuanzang trans.) carries the analysis one structural step further at fascicle 9:

「初靜慮中尋伺二種是對治支，能斷欲界欲恚害等尋伺故。喜樂二種是利益支，由尋伺支治所治已得離生喜樂故。心一境性是彼二所依自性支，依止定力尋等轉故。」 ("In the first jhāna, applied thought and sustained thought are counteraction-limbs (pratipakṣa-aṅga), as they cut off the applied and sustained thoughts of sense-desire, ill-will, and harm in the desire realm. Rapture and bliss are benefit-limbs (anuśaṃsa-aṅga), since by the counteraction-limbs' having cut off what is counteracted, the rapture and bliss of seclusion arise. Mental one-pointedness is the intrinsic-nature limb (svabhāva-aṅga) on which the previous two depend, since it is by reliance on the strength of concentration that applied thought and the rest occur.")¹⁰

The three-fold classification is Sthiramati's commentarial structuring, not a sutta-level term, and the present paper carries that register-distinction explicitly. The first jhāna's five factors divide into three structural classes: counteraction-limbs, which oppose particular defilements; benefit-limbs, which appear as the results of that opposition; and the single intrinsic-nature limb (svabhāva-aṅga) that is the jhāna's own essential structure. Mental one-pointedness alone occupies the third class. Across the four jhānas, the counteraction-limbs vary (different defilements are opposed at different altitudes), and the benefit-limbs vary (rapture and bliss are exchanged for finer states), but the intrinsic-nature limb persists unchanged. The other factors are limbs of something; mental one-pointedness is what each jhāna essentially is. In Sthiramati's formulation, the Chinese Yogācāra commentary reaches the strongest single statement of the partition the present paper proposes: the object-relational structure of mental one-pointedness, rather than any of its accompanying factors, constitutes the jhāna-state.

3.4 The four bases of supernormal power, converging on one-pointedness

A further structural witness comes from Asaṅga's Abhidharma-samuccaya (T1605《大乘阿毘達磨集論》AbhidharmasamuccayaT31, No. 1605View on CBETA online reader ↗) at fascicle 5, where the four bases of supernormal power (cattāro iddhipādā) — desire (chanda), effort (viriya), mind (citta), and investigation (vīmaṃsā) — are each said to terminate, in their developed form, in mental one-pointedness.¹¹ The four paths converge on the same point. Whatever entry the practitioner takes, the developed terminus is the same factor. This is not an additional alternative to mental one-pointedness; it is a fourfold testimony that the developed concentration-faculty is the same regardless of which of the four faculties brought the practitioner there. The structural finding aligns with the four-jhāna enumeration above: mental one-pointedness is the unique invariant.

3.5 The Vimuttimagga precursor and the moral-neutrality witness

Upatissa's Vimuttimagga (The Path of Liberation, T1648《解脫道論》T32, No. 1648View on CBETA online reader ↗), translated into Chinese by Saṅghapāla in the early sixth century — a treatise affiliated with a Theravāda-adjacent abhidhammic tradition, whose Pāli original is no longer extant — preserves a precursor formulation in fascicle 1:

「邪定、正定。云何邪定？不善一心，是謂邪定；若善一心，是謂正定。邪定當斷，正定應修。」 ("Wrong concentration, right concentration. What is wrong concentration? Unwholesome one-mind is called wrong concentration. What is wholesome one-mind is called right concentration. Wrong concentration is to be abandoned; right concentration is to be cultivated.")¹²

The passage carries two implications relevant to the present paper. First, the Chinese rendering 一心 — already documented in §2.2 as a fifth-century Āgama term — is here in active use in a sixth-century commentarial text, approximately a century and a half before Xuanzang would standardise 心一境性 as the Yogācāra technical term. The Vimuttimagga sits in the chain of Chinese precursors to the Yogācāra crystallisation. Second, the distinction Upatissa draws between wholesome and unwholesome one-mind makes the doctrinal status of ekaggatā explicit: the factor is morally neutral in itself. It is not self-validating. A criminal absorbed in planning a crime exhibits ekaggatā; so does a meditator absorbed in the contemplation of the earth disk. What distinguishes right from wrong concentration is not the presence or strength of mental one-pointedness but the moral character of the object on which it rests. Upatissa's distinction supplies a direct corollary of the present paper's central thesis: if the structure of the object determines what concentration can become, then the moral character of the object determines whether the concentration so reached is sammā-samādhi or micchā-samādhi. The two readings — structural and moral — are continuous applications of one principle. §V.4 returns to the moral dimension as an independent witness.

3.6 The four-channel translation migration

The Chinese-side history of the term may be summarised as a four-stage migration across approximately five hundred years and three distinct translation venues:

Stage	Period	Translator and venue	Term	Register
1	Early 5th c.	Guṇabhadra, descriptive uses in the Saṃyukta-āgama	一其心念 ("uniting one's mind-thought")	Āgama-layer descriptive usage
2a	5th c. (Liu-Song)	Guṇabhadra, Saṃyukta-āgama (T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗)	內淨一心 ("inner-purified one-mind")	Stable canonical translation, Sarvāstivāda-related transmission
2b	Late 4th c. (Eastern Jin)	Saṅghadeva, Madhyama Āgama (T0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗)	內靜一心 ("inner-stilled one-mind")	Cross-translator witness, same canonical layer
3	Early 5th c. (Later Qin)	Kumārajīva, Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗)	一心 ("one-mind")	Mādhyamika-related treatise usage
4	Early 6th c. (Liang)	Saṅghapāla, Vimuttimagga (T1648《解脫道論》T32, No. 1648View on CBETA online reader ↗)	一心 (善一心 / 不善一心)	Theravāda-related precursor commentary
5	7th c.	Xuanzang, Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra (T1579《瑜伽師地論》Yogācārabhūmi-śāstraT30, No. 1579Xuanzang (Tang, 646–648 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗) and related	心一境性 ("mental one-pointedness")	Yogācāra technical standardisation

The table records not a casual evolution but a structural concentration-history. The same underlying Pāli concept — the unification of the mind on a single object — is reached, independently and in succession, through three distinct translation venues (Sarvāstivāda-related Āgama; Mādhyamika-related Mahāprajñāpāramitā commentary; Yogācāra-related abhidharmic systematisation), each contributing one stable Chinese rendering. The Yogācāra crystallisation in Xuanzang's 心一境性 is not the replacement of the earlier renderings; it is the systematic culmination of a doctrinal vocabulary already laid down in the earlier strata. When a contemporary reader encounters the seven-character formula 三摩地者，謂於所緣審正觀察，心一境性, what is read is in fact the systematic terminus of a five-hundred-year terminological migration whose earlier stages — 一心, 內淨一心, 內靜一心 — remain visible in the canonical record. §I.3's register-self-awareness rests on this table.

3.7 The chain from sīla to samādhi in the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra

A final Chinese anchor closes the argument for the natural continuity from ethical conduct to concentration. Kumārajīva (344–413), translating Nāgārjuna's Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗) in Chang'an under the patronage of the Later Qin around 401–413 — approximately one hundred and fifty years before Xuanzang's translation activity — gives at fascicle 13 a chain whose structural shape directly mirrors AN 11.1, the Kimatthiyasutta of the Aṅguttara Nikāya:

「持戒之人，其心不悔，心不悔故得喜樂，得喜樂故得一心，得一心故得實智，得實智故得厭心，得厭心故得離欲，得離欲故得解脫，得解脫故得涅槃——如是持戒為諸善法根本。」 ("The person who upholds ethical conduct, their mind does not regret. Because their mind does not regret, they attain joy and bliss. Because they attain joy and bliss, they attain one-mind. Because they attain one-mind, they attain true wisdom. Because they attain true wisdom, they attain disenchantment. Because they attain disenchantment, they attain dispassion. Because they attain dispassion, they attain liberation. Because they attain liberation, they attain nibbāna — thus ethical conduct is the root of all wholesome states.")¹³

The Chinese chain corresponds, link for link, to the eleven-fold Pāli sequence at AN 11.1: sīla → avippaṭisāra (non-remorse) → pāmojja (joy) → pīti (rapture, here folded into 喜樂) → passaddhi (tranquility, similarly folded) → sukha (bliss) → samādhi (here rendered 一心) → yathābhūta-ñāṇa (knowledge-and-vision-of-things-as-they-are, here 實智) → nibbidā (disenchantment) → virāga (dispassion) → vimutti (liberation) → nibbāna. The Chinese translation of the seventh link — the samādhi link — uses 一心, not 心一境性. The terminological choice testifies again that 一心 is the canonical-stratum Chinese rendering for samādhi-as-one-pointedness, in use one and a half centuries before Xuanzang's systematic 心一境性. The chain itself supplies the doctrinal frame for §VI's closing reflection: the movement from ethical conduct to concentration is the natural emergence of one psychological state from another, link by link, not the forceful advance of a meditator pushing toward a target.

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IV. Dialogue with Modern Scholarship

The present paper continues the three-scholar conversational frame inaugurated in P01 and developed across P02 and P03: Bhante Anālayo, Rupert Gethin, and Bhikkhu Bodhi. The structure of the dialogue takes a two-step form — first Concede, granting fully what each scholar's labour has secured; then Extend, marking the layer at which the present paper carries the work forward. The aim is neither correction nor displacement but extension: each predecessor's accomplishment is the platform on which the present paper builds.

4.1 Anālayo

Concede: Anālayo's labour secures two contributions on which §I and §II of this paper directly rest. First, the strict lexical distinction between sati and samādhi — and, by extension, between the receptive present-holding of mindfulness and the structured unification of concentration — preserves a difference that contemporary Western mindfulness discourse has been prone to blur. The distinction was already deployed in P03 §1.1 and carries forward into the present paper's separation of recollection-objects from concentration-objects. Second, the cross-traditional methodology of his Saṃyukta-āgama Studies (2015), in which the second-jhāna pericope is shown to stand stable across Pāli and Chinese Āgama transmissions, supplies the textual ground on which §I.5 and §II.2 build. Anālayo's positioning of the four-jhāna pericope as a pre-sectarian witness — a formula stabilised before the school-period division and preserved in mutually independent Pāli and Chinese transmissions — secures the documentary base for the present paper's reading. His careful bracketing of the sutta-jhāna versus Visuddhimagga-jhāna debate as a question whose resolution does not affect the canonical witness itself is also adopted here without modification.

Extend: Anālayo's analysis operates principally at the level of textual stability and at the level of cross-traditional comparison. The present paper asks a question one analytic layer finer: given that the second-jhāna pericope holds stable across traditions and that mental one-pointedness is its invariant unifying factor, what determines whether a given practitioner's ekaggatā can refine from access-level to absorption-level? The answer the present paper proposes — that the object-structure determines the ceiling — sits one layer below cross-traditional textual stability. It is a structural-doctrinal claim that builds on Anālayo's philological work without displacing it. The textual stability his methodology has secured is precisely what makes the structural argument possible: only because the same partition holds across traditions can the partition itself be read as structural rather than as redactional accident.

4.2 Gethin

Concede: Rupert Gethin's The Buddhist Path to Awakening (Brill 1992 / Oneworld 2001) and The Foundations of Buddhism (Oxford 1998) supply two structural orientations the present paper inherits in full. The first is the placement of samādhi within the bodhi-pakkhiya-dhammā, the architecture of the qualities conducive to awakening: samādhi is one of the five faculties (indriya), one of the five powers (bala), one of the eight limbs of the noble eightfold path, and the sixth of the seven awakening-factors. Concentration is not a peripheral or specialist concern; it is a structural component of the integral path, woven through multiple canonical taxonomies (Gethin 1992, ch. 7). The second is the survey of the forty kammaṭṭhāna and their canonical and commentarial classification (Gethin 1992, ch. 7; 1998, ch. 3): the partition between subjects admitting absorption and subjects admitting only access concentration is registered within Buddhaghosa's classification and discussed in its proper structural context. The character-ethics reading of sīla — already adopted in P01 and P02 — also extends through the present paper's treatment of sīlānussati's object as already-cultivated character rather than externally-imposed rule.

Lance Cousins's 1973 essay "Buddhist Jhāna: Its Nature and Attainment According to the Pāli Sources" (in the journal Religion 3, no. 1) is cited here in passing reference only; the present paper has not directly consulted that article and acknowledges it via Gethin's note.

Extend: Gethin's survey operates at the level of structural cartography — which component belongs to which taxonomy, how the kammaṭṭhāna are classified, where the partition between absorption-admitting and access-only subjects is registered. The present paper asks the next question: what constitutes the partition? Gethin's survey records that the partition exists; the present paper proposes that the partition is owed to the structural shape of the object — single-homogeneous versus multiple-propositional — and that the partition is, in consequence, a universal structural constraint on the realisation of mental one-pointedness in all forty subjects, not a contingent feature of any one of them. The cartographic survey is the platform; the structural argument is the next layer up.

4.3 Bodhi

Concede: Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation labour supplies three foundations the present paper takes up. First, his strict rendering of anussati as recollection, sharply distinguished from the mindfulness of sati, was foundational for P03 §1.1 and remains operative throughout the present paper. Second, his editorial introductions to The Connected Discourses (Wisdom 2000) and The Numerical Discourses (Wisdom 2012) furnish the contemporary anglophone scholarly grounding for the canonical context of cittass'ekaggatā. Third, his footnoted distinction in those introductions between the rendering of ekaggatā as "one-pointedness" in Visuddhimagga contexts — where the abhidhammic specification is at issue — and the looser rendering as "unification" or "single-focus" in sutta contexts, where the term carries less abstractive weight, is itself the scholarly source of the register-self-awareness articulated in §I.3 of the present paper. The discipline of register-marking — knowing when one is reading sutta-layer language and when one is reading commentarial-layer language — that Bodhi's translation apparatus models throughout his three-Nikāya project is one of the present paper's methodological inheritances.

Extend: Bodhi's labour reaches the level of translation register and footnote-gloss. The migration of the Chinese-side rendering across approximately five hundred years and three translation venues — Āgama 一其心念 → fifth-to-sixth-century 一心 / 內淨一心 / 內靜一心 → seventh-century 心一境性 — is a parallel register-migration on the Chinese side that lies outside the apparatus of Pāli-English translation. The present paper extends Bodhi's discipline of register-distinction into the Chinese terminological history, reading the four-channel migration documented in §III.6 as a structural witness to the same doctrinal partition appearing under successive translation lenses. The cross-translation-tradition concentration is itself evidence: when three independent translation streams converge on one structural concept, the convergence supplies an independent line of testimony to the doctrine's centrality.

4.4 A three-scholar synthesis

Across the three readings — Anālayo's cross-traditional textual stability, Gethin's structural cartography of the path-architecture and the kammaṭṭhāna taxonomy, Bodhi's translation-register discipline — the present paper extracts a categorical generalisation. The partition between access-admitting and absorption-admitting meditation subjects is not a contingent feature of any one canon or any one commentarial tradition; it is a universal realisation-constraint owed to the structure of the object. The three scholars' labour reaches the external survey of text and structure; the present paper takes that survey as the platform and proposes the structural-doctrinal layer underlying it. The argument's authority for that next layer comes not from any modern reading but from Buddhaghosa at Visuddhimagga Chapter III and Chapter IV — to which §V now turns. The sutta-jhāna-versus-Visuddhimagga-jhāna debate, registered in passing at §I.4, stands deliberately upstream of this argument: the partition is canonical on either side of the contested altitude question.

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V. The Object-Structure Argument

5.1 The two-recollection exception

A potential counter-example to the partition presents itself within the anussati list itself. Of the ten recollections enumerated by Buddhaghosa at Visuddhimagga Chapter III (the six standard recollections plus recollection of death, recollection of peace, mindfulness of breathing, and mindfulness immersed in the body), eight cap at access-level concentration as predicted by the structural thesis. But two members of the list — mindfulness of breathing (ānāpāna-sati) and mindfulness immersed in the body (kāyagatā-sati) — reach absorption: the breath-mindfulness up to the fourth jhāna, the body-mindfulness up to the first. If the partition is owed to object-structure, why do these two recollections cross it?

The closer reading reveals that the exceptions confirm rather than refute the thesis. The object of mindfulness of breathing, in its developed form, is not a propositional content carrying multiple distinguishable items; it is the direct sensory contact of the in-breath and out-breath at the touch-point of the nostrils or upper lip. The object of mindfulness immersed in the body, in its developed form, is not a list of conceptual virtues to be recollected but the visualised image of the body's thirty-two parts (head-hair, body-hair, nails, teeth, skin, and so on), each held as a direct visualised percept rather than as a propositional content. In both cases, the object is single-homogeneous in the structurally relevant sense: it is a direct percept, not a list of distinguishable items each carrying its own enactive content.

The classification axis is therefore object-shape, not practice-name. The eight recollections that stop at access — Buddha, Dhamma, Saṅgha, ethical conduct, generosity, the deities, death, and peace — are placed under the anussati heading because they all involve directed remembering of a settled doctrinal content; that classificatory heading does not in itself determine the concentration ceiling. What determines the ceiling is whether the object the recollection takes is structurally plural (multiple distinguishable items held simultaneously or in sequence) or structurally singular (a direct percept held one-pointedly). Mindfulness of breathing and mindfulness immersed in the body share the anussati heading with the eight access-only recollections because the heading classifies by practice type; they share the absorption-admitting structural property with the kasiṇa meditation subjects because the property classifies by object-shape. The two classification axes are independent. P03's special case — sīlānussati's access-level ceiling — risked being read as a deficiency in a single practice; if it were the only example, that reading would have remained plausible. The two-recollection exception forecloses the deficiency reading and converts the special case into the categorical thesis: the partition is structural, not idiosyncratic.

5.2 The three-sign progression

The cognitive mechanism by which a single-homogeneous object is brought through to absorption is laid out at Visuddhimagga Chapter IV in the exposition of the earth kasiṇa and is the how underlying the why P03 gave for the access-only ceiling. The mechanism has three stages.

The first stage is the preparatory sign (parikamma-nimitta). The practitioner takes a physical disk of uniform earth-coloured material as the meditation object, sets it at the proper distance, and contemplates it with the eyes open. The mind is still dependent on direct sensory contact; the object exists outside the practitioner as a physical thing.

The second stage is the acquired sign (uggaha-nimitta). After repeated contemplation, the practitioner can close the eyes and the image of the disk arises internally, faithful in its features to the physical original. The dependence on outer perception has dropped; the object is now an internal mental image, though still carrying the particulars of the physical disk (its texture, its edge, the small irregularities of the original).

The third stage is the counterpart sign (paṭibhāga-nimitta). The internal image refines, purifies, and stabilises further. The particulars of the original drop away — the texture, the small irregularities — and what remains is a luminous, still, pure mental form, clear as a polished mirror or as moonlight on still water. At this stage the mind can rest fully on the sign, and full absorption (appanā-samādhi) becomes accessible.¹⁴ The three-stage progression is the cognitive specification of the partition: only an object that admits this progressive refinement — only a single-homogeneous object capable of being interiorised, purified, and stabilised as a counterpart sign — admits the absorption that comes through resting on the counterpart sign. The eight access-only recollections, whose objects are propositional contents distributed across multiple distinguishable items, admit only the first two stages of refinement. There is no homogeneous direct percept available to be refined into a counterpart sign, because there is no single percept in the first place; the practitioner's attention moves among eight virtues, each carrying its own conceptual structure. The recollection plateaus at access. The three-sign progression supplies the cognitive how for the structural why P03 gave: the depth of the virtues and the multiplicity of the kinds make a counterpart sign cognitively impossible.

5.3 The Sarvāstivāda-Theravāda divergence

A philological witness to the partition's structural status comes from a divergence between the Saṃyukta-āgama and the Saṃyutta Nikāya at corresponding loci on the analysis of the concentration-faculty. In Guṇabhadra's Saṃyukta-āgama, sūtra 647 of fascicle 26, the concentration-faculty is defined experientially:

「何等為定根？若聖弟子離欲、惡不善法⋯⋯具足第四禪⋯⋯是名定根。」 ("What is the concentration-faculty? When a noble disciple, separated from sense-desire and unwholesome states … attains and dwells in the fourth jhāna … this is called the concentration-faculty.")¹⁵

The Pāli parallel, SN 48.10 of the Indriya-saṃyutta, defines the same faculty by an abstract mental-factor term: cittass'ekaggatā — mental one-pointedness. The two canonical formulations witness the same underlying doctrinal content under structurally different framings: the Sarvāstivāda transmission preserves the experiential definition (the four jhānas as accomplished states), reserving abstract mental-factor analysis for the commentarial layer; the Theravāda transmission carries the abstract-factor analysis into the sutta layer itself, defining the faculty by its constituent mental factor rather than by its experiential expression.

The divergence is not a contradiction but two complementary canonical strategies. It is also a strong confirmation of the present paper's thesis: the object-structure argument holds stable across both framings. Whether the concentration-faculty is defined experientially as the four jhānas or analytically as cittass'ekaggatā, the underlying partition between objects that admit absorption and objects that admit only access concentration remains the same. The structural claim does not depend on which canonical framing is taken as primary; it operates upstream of the canonical divergence.

5.4 The moral-neutrality witness

A further independent confirmation comes from the wholesome-versus-unwholesome distinction registered in §3.5's reading of the Vimuttimagga. Mental one-pointedness, considered in itself as a mental factor, is morally neutral: it occurs in unwholesome states as well as in wholesome ones. A thief absorbed in the planning of a theft exhibits ekaggatā; a meditator absorbed in the contemplation of the earth kasiṇa exhibits ekaggatā. What distinguishes the wholesome from the unwholesome variant is not the strength or steadiness of the factor itself but the moral character of the object on which it rests. The Yogācārabhūmi's definition at §3.1 — concentration as scrutinised observation with regard to an object — already implies this moral-neutrality. The factor as such is content-less; what it becomes is determined by its object. Upatissa's terse formulation states the implication explicitly: unwholesome one-mind is wrong concentration; wholesome one-mind is right concentration. The moral-status reading runs parallel to the structural-altitude reading: just as the structure of the object determines whether samādhi reaches absorption, so the moral character of the object determines whether samādhi is sammā- or micchā-. The two readings are continuous applications of one principle: the object is the determinative correlate of what mental one-pointedness becomes.

5.5 The universal-realisation constraint articulated

The argument can now be stated in full. Mental one-pointedness is a universal mental factor, present in some degree in every directed mental act — ordinary concentration on a task, the recollection of doctrinal content, the absorption of a kasiṇa contemplative. The factor itself varies in intensity along a continuous scale. But the maximum intensity any given meditation subject can yield is constrained by the structure of its object. Where the object is single-homogeneous, capable of being progressively interiorised and refined into a counterpart sign, the practice admits the full absorption that comes with resting on the counterpart sign. Where the object is structurally plural — propositional, conceptual, distributed across multiple distinguishable items — the practice admits the access-level concentration that comes with steady directed attention, but no further. The ceiling is structural; it is not owed to insufficient effort, deficient method, or lack of sustained training. A practitioner who selects sīlānussati as their meditation subject has thereby selected access concentration as the ceiling of that practice; the question "how can I push sīlānussati into absorption?" is not a question that can be answered, because it is structurally ill-formed. This is not an evaluative claim about the relative worth of meditation subjects (P03 has already shown that sīlānussati performs a function within access-level concentration that absorption could not perform), nor is it a hierarchical ranking. It is structural transparency: the object-shape of the chosen subject is the ceiling-shape of the resulting concentration. The object-structure constraint is the universal realisation-constraint underlying the forty-kammaṭṭhāna taxonomy.

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VI. Conclusion

6.1 The natural emergence from ethical conduct to concentration

The closing reflection returns to the chain Kumārajīva preserved in his translation of the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra at §3.7: from ethical conduct to non-remorse to joy to bliss to one-mind to true wisdom to disenchantment to dispassion to liberation to nibbāna. The Pāli parallel at AN 11.1 carries the same eleven links in the same order. The structural feature of the chain that bears on the present paper's closing is the connective particle "because" (Chinese 故, Pāli implicit in the verb-form) at each link. The mind that does not regret yields joy because the absence of remorse is the natural ground for joy; the mind that holds joy yields one-mind because the unified composure of joy is the natural ground for unification; the one-mind yields true wisdom because unified attention is the natural ground for seeing things as they are. The chain does not advance by force. Each link emerges from its predecessor as the predecessor's natural ripening.

This is the doctrinal frame that closes Part I of the SĪLA volume. Mental one-pointedness is not extracted from the mind by technique; it is what arises when the conditions that precede it have themselves arisen. The conditions that precede it are exactly those Part I has laid down — the three axes of ethical conduct (P01), the eight virtues that constitute stream-entry (P02), the reflexive recollection of one's own already-cultivated ethical conduct (P03), and now the structural understanding of the object on which mental one-pointedness rests (P04). The contemporary contemplative culture's tendency to present absorption as a technical attainment to be achieved by sufficient effort runs against the grain of this chain. The chain says: ethical conduct yields non-remorse, non-remorse yields joy, joy yields tranquility, tranquility yields bliss, bliss yields one-mind. The one-mind is not pushed for; it is grown from the conditions beneath it. Forced concentration arises where the conditions beneath it have been bypassed.

Read in this light, the five-fold Saṃyukta-āgama phrase 內淨一心 — inner-purified one-mind — recovers its precise weight. The "inner purity" (內淨, ajjhattaṁ sampasādanaṁ) is the precondition that ethical conduct generates; the "one-mind" (一心) is what naturally arises on that ground. The two halves of the four-character phrase are not two parallel descriptions; they are condition and consequence, captured in a fourth-century translator's choice with structural precision.

6.2 Part I's structural seal

The four papers of Part I now stand as a four-step structural progression: the three axes of ethical conduct (P01), the eight virtues as stream-entry attributes (P02), the eight virtues as recollection-objects (P03), and the universal object-structure constraint that places sīlānussati's ceiling in its appropriate context within the full forty-kammaṭṭhāna taxonomy (P04). The structure is concentric: P01 names ethical conduct, P02 places ethical conduct as character, P03 reads ethical conduct as recollection-object, P04 reads the recollection-object as one structural shape within a universal partition. Part I's closing brings the chain from the particularity of sīla through to the universal structural constraint that lets the volume's later parts proceed: with the partition in place, Parts II through VIII can take up their respective subjects without further argument about the structural status of the underlying mental factor.

6.3 The SAMĀDHI forward link

The SAMĀDHI volume inherits, from the present paper, the universal-realisation constraint as upstream doctrinal background. The operational specifics of individual meditation subjects — how the earth kasiṇa disk is prepared, how the breath is held at the touch-point, how the body-parts are visualised, how the four immeasurables are extended, how the impurity contemplations are conducted, how the recollection of the Buddha through the ten epithets is sequenced, how the nine successive resting-states (navānupubba-vihāra) are entered — all belong to that next volume's main scene. The present paper is structurally upstream of those practical specifications. A practitioner reading the SAMĀDHI volume should already know, from this paper, why their chosen subject has the ceiling it has; that knowledge frees the practical engagement from the false question of why a given subject is not yielding more than it structurally can.

6.4 A single image, in closing

The Chinese word 一心 — one-mind — has carried this paper's argument across two languages and five centuries of translation work. It is the Āgama-translator's rendering of cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ; it is the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra's rendering of samādhi within the chain from ethical conduct to nibbāna; it is the Vimuttimagga's rendering of the morally-neutral concentration-factor; it is the precursor to Xuanzang's seventh-century crystallisation 心一境性. The three characters carry, across all four registers, the same structural intuition: a mind whose attention rests on a single object, undistracted, undivided. When the object has the shape that admits refinement, the one-mind grows into absorption. When the object has the shape that admits only steady attention, the one-mind rests at access. The choice of object is the choice of altitude. The conditions that produce the one-mind in either form are the same conditions: ethical conduct, freedom from remorse, joy, tranquility, bliss. The one-mind is natural emergence on those conditions. That is the closing image of Part I, and the doctrinal threshold from which SAMĀDHI proceeds.

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References

Primary Sources

• Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta, DN 22 (PTS DN ii 290ff). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition.
• Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta, MN 10 (PTS MN i 55ff). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition.
• Saṅgīti-sutta, DN 33 (PTS DN iii 207ff). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. [Cited by PTS reference only; primary text not held in the present author's working corpus.]
• Cūḷavedalla-sutta, MN 44 (PTS MN i 301). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. [PTS-only citation.]
• Samādhindriya-sutta, SN 48.9–10 (PTS SN v 197–198). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. [PTS-only citation.]
• Saṁvarasutta, AN 4.14. Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition.
• Samādhibhāvanā-sutta, AN 4.41 (PTS AN ii 44). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. [PTS-only citation.]
• Samādhi-sutta, AN 5.27 (PTS AN iii 24). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. [PTS-only citation.]
• Mahānāmasutta, AN 6.10 (PTS AN iii 285ff). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition.
• Kimatthiyasutta, AN 11.1 (PTS AN v 1–2). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition.
• Paṭhamamahānāma, AN 11.11 (PTS AN v 328). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition.
• Sujato, Bhante, trans. Long Discourses (Dīgha Nikāya), Middle Discourses (Majjhima Nikāya), and Numbered Discourses (Aṅguttara Nikāya). SuttaCentral, public domain.
• Buddhaghosa. Visuddhimagga, Chapter III Kammaṭṭhāna-niddesa, Chapter IV Paṭhavī-kasiṇa-niddesa, and Chapter VII §4 Sīlānussati-niddesa. Cited by paraphrase via Ñāṇamoli's translation (below); chapter-section citation only, paragraph numbering pending physical consultation with the BPS edition.
• 求那跋陀羅 (Guṇabhadra), trans. Saṃyukta-āgama (T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗). Taishō vol. 2. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka.
• 瞿曇僧伽提婆 (Saṅghadeva), trans. Madhyama Āgama (T0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗). Taishō vol. 1. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka.
• 鳩摩羅什 (Kumārajīva), trans. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗), attributed to Nāgārjuna. Taishō vol. 25. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka.
• 玄奘 (Xuanzang), trans. Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra (T1579《瑜伽師地論》Yogācārabhūmi-śāstraT30, No. 1579Xuanzang (Tang, 646–648 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗), attributed to Maitreya and Asaṅga. Taishō vol. 30. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka.
• 玄奘 (Xuanzang), trans. Prakaraṇāryavācā-śāstra (Xianyang shengjiao lun, T1602《顯揚聖教論》T31, No. 1602View on CBETA online reader ↗), attributed to Asaṅga. Taishō vol. 31. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka.
• 玄奘 (Xuanzang), trans. Abhidharma-samuccaya (T1605《大乘阿毘達磨集論》AbhidharmasamuccayaT31, No. 1605View on CBETA online reader ↗), attributed to Asaṅga. Taishō vol. 31. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka.
• 玄奘 (Xuanzang), trans. Abhidharma-samuccaya-vyākhyā (T1606《大乘阿毘達磨雜集論》Abhidharmasamuccaya-vyākhyāT31, No. 1606View on CBETA online reader ↗), attributed to Sthiramati. Taishō vol. 31. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka.
• 僧伽婆羅 (Saṅghapāla), trans. Vimuttimagga (T1648《解脫道論》T32, No. 1648View on CBETA online reader ↗), attributed to Upatissa. Taishō vol. 32. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka.

Modern Scholarship

• Anālayo, Bhikkhu. Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization. Cambridge: Windhorse, 2003.
• Anālayo, Bhikkhu. Saṃyukta-āgama Studies. Taipei: Dharma Drum, 2015.
• Bodhi, Bhikkhu, trans. The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya. Boston: Wisdom, 2000.
• Bodhi, Bhikkhu, trans. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya (with Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli). Boston: Wisdom, 1995; rev. ed. 2009.
• Bodhi, Bhikkhu, trans. The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: A Complete Translation of the Aṅguttara Nikāya. Boston: Wisdom, 2012.
• Cousins, Lance S. "Buddhist Jhāna: Its Nature and Attainment According to the Pāli Sources." Religion 3, no. 1 (1973): 115–131. [Cited in §IV.2 in passing reference only, via Gethin 1992; not directly consulted.]
• Gethin, Rupert. The Buddhist Path to Awakening: A Study of the Bodhi-Pakkhiyā Dhammā. Leiden: Brill, 1992; reprinted Oxford: Oneworld, 2001.
• Gethin, Rupert. The Foundations of Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Ñāṇamoli, Bhikkhu, trans. The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga). 4th ed. Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1979.
• Walshe, Maurice, trans. The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya. Boston: Wisdom, 1995.

Sūtra and Śāstra Index

• T0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗: Madhyama Āgama (Sarvāstivāda-related Chinese rendering, trans. Saṅghadeva, Eastern Jin, c. 397–398).
• T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗: Saṃyukta-āgama (Sarvāstivāda-related Chinese rendering, trans. Guṇabhadra, Liu-Song, c. 435–443).
• T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗: Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (Mādhyamika; attributed to Nāgārjuna; trans. Kumārajīva, Later Qin, c. 401–413).
• T1579《瑜伽師地論》Yogācārabhūmi-śāstraT30, No. 1579Xuanzang (Tang, 646–648 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗: Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra (Yogācāra; attributed to Maitreya and Asaṅga; trans. Xuanzang, Tang, c. 646–648).
• T1602《顯揚聖教論》T31, No. 1602View on CBETA online reader ↗: Prakaraṇāryavācā-śāstra (Xianyang shengjiao lun; Yogācāra; attributed to Asaṅga; trans. Xuanzang).
• T1605《大乘阿毘達磨集論》AbhidharmasamuccayaT31, No. 1605View on CBETA online reader ↗: Abhidharma-samuccaya (Yogācāra abhidharma; attributed to Asaṅga; trans. Xuanzang).
• T1606《大乘阿毘達磨雜集論》Abhidharmasamuccaya-vyākhyāT31, No. 1606View on CBETA online reader ↗: Abhidharma-samuccaya-vyākhyā (Yogācāra abhidharma; Sthiramati's commentary on T1605《大乘阿毘達磨集論》AbhidharmasamuccayaT31, No. 1605View on CBETA online reader ↗; trans. Xuanzang).
• T1648《解脫道論》T32, No. 1648View on CBETA online reader ↗: Vimuttimagga (Theravāda-related; attributed to Upatissa; trans. Saṅghapāla, Liang, early 6th c.).

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Cross-References

Within-Volume Continuity

• SILA P03 Sīlānussati: Sīla as an Object of Recollection — direct predecessor; supplies the two reasons (gambhīratā and nānappakāra-guṇānussaraṇa-adhimuttatā) that the present paper generalises into the categorical object-structure constraint. §V completes P03's special-case-to-universal-rule progression.
• SILA P02 Ariyakanta-sīla as the Fourth Sotāpattiyaṅga — the eight virtues read on the subject-side (P02) and on the object-side (P03) now form, together with the present paper's universal structural reading (P04), the three-step structural progression of Part I.
• SILA P01 What Sīla Actually Means — the three-axis foundation (sīla, saṃvara, vinaya) referenced at §I.5 in the architectural positioning of the four-paper Part I structure; the vinaya axis remains the structural background for the moral-neutrality discussion of §V.4.

Within-Volume Forward Links

• SILA Part II (forthcoming; P05 The Eightfold Path's Three Ethical Limbs) — Part I's four-paper foundation closes here; Part II opens with the three ethical limbs of the noble eightfold path (sammā-vācā, sammā-kammanta, sammā-ājīva) read as path-elements rather than as constraint-list.
• SILA Parts IV–V (forthcoming; the three pure precepts of the Mahāyāna and the precept-substance question) — the present paper's object-structure argument supplies the Pāli-side analytical foundation on which the later Mahāyāna interiorisation of sīla and the Chinese precept-substance ontology will build.
• SILA Part VI (forthcoming; the twelve great vows of Bhaiṣajyaguru) — the universal-realisation constraint articulated here is one of the structural modes within which the support-conditions for ethical conduct in the Bhaiṣajyaguru material are to be read.

Cross-Volume Forward Links

• SAMĀDHI volume — the present paper hands forward the entire operational layer of the forty kammaṭṭhāna (individual kasiṇa training stages, the practical specifications of the counterpart-sign progression, the operational specifics of individual jhāna-attainment) to the next volume's main scene. The present paper establishes the classification and the structural argument; SAMĀDHI develops the practice.
• NIAN P03 The Six Recollections — sister architectural treatment of the six-anussati frame in Volume I; the present paper generalises the object-multiplicity-as-ceiling structural finding beyond the six recollections to all forty kammaṭṭhāna.

Octalogy Relation (sister series)

The present paper does not advance any Octalogy-side argument; the Octalogy is sealed. SĪLA Part I (P01–P04) closes here with the universal object-structure argument in place; Part II will open onto the Āgama-side practical ethical structures (the eightfold-path three sīla-limbs, the five precepts, the uposatha, sīla-gandha).

Footnotes

1. Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta, DN 22 §858–868, and the mirror passage in Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta, MN 10. Pāli text from the Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka Buddhavasse 2500 edition (public domain), collated against the local Pāli vault file (mirror passage), verification 17 May 2026. ↩

2. Sujato, Bhante, trans., DN 22, in Long Discourses (SuttaCentral, public-domain release). The mirror rendering for MN 10 is identical in the relevant phrase. ↩

3. Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra (T1579《瑜伽師地論》Yogācārabhūmi-śāstraT30, No. 1579Xuanzang (Tang, 646–648 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗), attributed to Maitreya and Asaṅga, trans. Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 30, fascicle 11. Collated against CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka T30n1579《瑜伽師地論》Yogācārabhūmi-śāstraT30, No. 1579Xuanzang (Tang, 646–648 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗. ↩

4. Mahānāmasutta, AN 6.10 (PTS AN iii 285ff), with mirror at Paṭhamamahānāma, AN 11.11 (PTS AN v 328). Pāli text from the Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka Buddhavasse 2500 edition (public domain), collated against the local Pāli vault file (closing cascade) and the AN 11.11 mirror at lines 122–130, verification 17 May 2026. The same five-step ascending chain appears six times in the canonical pericope, once at the close of each of the six recollections; the cascade's structural significance for the canonical articulation of the path from ethical conduct to concentration was already adopted in P03 §IV and is here generalised. AN 4.14 (Saṁvarasutta) places the concentration-factor samādhi-sambojjhaṅga as the sixth of the seven awakening-factors, fixing one-pointedness as a structural component of the bodhi-pakkhiya architecture. ↩

5. Saṃyukta-āgama (T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗), trans. Guṇabhadra, Taishō vol. 2. The five attested locations of the phrase 內淨一心 within Guṇabhadra's translation are: fascicle 14 lines 347–349 (Susīma dialogue); fascicle 17 lines 627–630 (food-and-no-food material on dependent arising); fascicle 18 lines 590–599 (Mahāmaudgalyāyana noble-silence episode); fascicle 21 line 597 (Citra householder petition); fascicle 31 line 86 (five-aggregates contemplation). All five collated against CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka T02n0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗ and the local vault files, verification 17 May 2026. Guṇabhadra's translation activity in the Liu-Song court is generally dated to the Yuanjia reign-period (元嘉, 424–453), with the Saṃyukta-āgama translation completed approximately 435–443 CE. ↩

6. Madhyama Āgama (T0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗), trans. Saṅghadeva, Taishō vol. 1, fascicle 25. Collated against CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka T01n0026《中阿含經》MadhyamāgamaT1, No. 26View on CBETA online reader ↗. Saṅghadeva's translation activity in the Eastern Jin period is dated to the Taiyuan reign-period (太元, 376–397), with the Madhyama Āgama translation completed approximately 397–398 CE. ↩

7. The five Pāli targets — MN 44 Cūḷavedalla, SN 48.9–10 Samādhindriya, DN 33 Saṅgīti, AN 4.41 Samādhibhāvanā, and AN 5.27 Samādhi — are cited here by PTS reference only. The present author's working Pāli corpus does not contain these loci, and the discipline of citing only what can be verified directly precludes any verbatim Pāli reconstruction from memory or from secondary paraphrase. The cited witnesses stand as known canonical loci for the abhidharmic embedding of ekaggatā; readers seeking primary text should consult Bhikkhu Bodhi's translations (Bodhi 2009 for MN 44; Bodhi 2000 for SN 48.9–10; Walshe 1995 for DN 33; Bodhi 2012 for AN 4.41 and AN 5.27), each of which gives the Pāli alongside the English with substantial editorial introduction. ↩

8. Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra (T1579《瑜伽師地論》Yogācārabhūmi-śāstraT30, No. 1579Xuanzang (Tang, 646–648 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗), trans. Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 30, fascicle 11. Collated against CBETA T30n1579《瑜伽師地論》Yogācārabhūmi-śāstraT30, No. 1579Xuanzang (Tang, 646–648 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗. Xuanzang's translation activity following his 645 return from India is variously dated; the Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra translation is generally placed in the years 646–648. ↩

9. Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra (T1579《瑜伽師地論》Yogācārabhūmi-śāstraT30, No. 1579Xuanzang (Tang, 646–648 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗), fascicle 11. Collated against CBETA T30n1579《瑜伽師地論》Yogācārabhūmi-śāstraT30, No. 1579Xuanzang (Tang, 646–648 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗. The four-jhāna five-factor structure is repeated, with consistent factor enumeration, at Prakaraṇāryavācā-śāstra (Xianyang shengjiao lun, T1602《顯揚聖教論》T31, No. 1602View on CBETA online reader ↗, attributed to Asaṅga, trans. Xuanzang), fascicle 19, providing an internal Yogācāra cross-witness to the analysis. ↩

10. Abhidharma-samuccaya-vyākhyā (T1606《大乘阿毘達磨雜集論》Abhidharmasamuccaya-vyākhyāT31, No. 1606View on CBETA online reader ↗), Sthiramati's elaboration of Asaṅga's Abhidharma-samuccaya, trans. Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 31, fascicle 9. Collated against CBETA T31n1606《大乘阿毘達磨雜集論》Abhidharmasamuccaya-vyākhyāT31, No. 1606View on CBETA online reader ↗. The three-fold classification — pratipakṣa-aṅga (counteraction-limb), anuśaṃsa-aṅga (benefit-limb), and svabhāva-aṅga (intrinsic-nature limb) — is Sthiramati's commentarial structural analysis, not a sutta-layer term; the Sanskrit reconstructions of the three terms follow standard scholarly conventions. ↩

11. Abhidharma-samuccaya (T1605《大乘阿毘達磨集論》AbhidharmasamuccayaT31, No. 1605View on CBETA online reader ↗), Asaṅga, trans. Xuanzang, Taishō vol. 31, fascicle 5. The four bases of supernormal power (cattāro iddhipādā) — desire (chanda), effort (viriya), mind (citta), and investigation (vīmaṃsā) — are placed within the third group of the thirty-seven aids to awakening; the fascicle-5 passage marks their convergence on mental one-pointedness as the developed terminus. ↩

12. Vimuttimagga (T1648《解脫道論》T32, No. 1648View on CBETA online reader ↗), attributed to Upatissa, trans. Saṅghapāla, Taishō vol. 32, fascicle 1. Collated against the source XML file at lines 939–940 (Taishō page locator 0407b13–14), verification 17 May 2026. The Pāli original of the Vimuttimagga (Vimuttimagga) is no longer extant; the Chinese translation by Saṅghapāla, completed in the early sixth century under the Liang, preserves the treatise. Its sectarian affiliation is generally placed within a Theravāda-adjacent abhidhammic tradition (the Abhayagirivāsin school is one candidate). The treatise is broadly understood as a precursor to Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga, with which it shares substantial structural parallels. ↩

13. Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra (T1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗), attributed to Nāgārjuna, trans. Kumārajīva, Taishō vol. 25, fascicle 13. Collated against CBETA T25n1509《大智度論》Mahāprajñāpāramitā-upadeśa-śāstraT25, No. 1509Kumārajīva (Later Qin, 405 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗. Kumārajīva's translation activity in Chang'an under the Later Qin court is dated to 401–413 CE. The chain reproduces, link for link, the eleven-fold canonical sequence of AN 11.1 (Kimatthiyasutta): sīla → avippaṭisāra → pāmojja → pīti / passaddhi (folded by Kumārajīva into 喜樂) → sukha → samādhi (rendered 一心) → yathābhūta-ñāṇa (rendered 實智) → nibbidā → virāga → vimutti → nibbāna. The chain stands approximately one and a half centuries earlier than Xuanzang's seventh-century standardisation of 心一境性 and witnesses the structural identity of the doctrine across Mādhyamika and Yogācāra translation venues. ↩

14. The three-stage progression of signs — parikamma-nimitta (preparatory sign), uggaha-nimitta (acquired sign), and paṭibhāga-nimitta (counterpart sign) — is laid out at Visuddhimagga Chapter IV in the exposition of the earth kasiṇa. The present paper cites by chapter-section name rather than by paragraph number: the relevant exposition is in the section on the progression of the meditation sign within the earth kasiṇa chapter. Paragraph-level citation pending physical-text consultation with Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli's English translation, The Path of Purification (Buddhist Publication Society, 4th ed., 1979). The terminology of the three stages is Buddhaghosa's; the underlying structural intuition, that the mental image is progressively refined from a perceptually-grounded representation to a luminous and feature-free mental form, is already implicit in the canonical four-jhāna pericope's description of the second-jhāna "mind at one." The exposition is paraphrased rather than directly quoted on account of the GRETIL Pāli text's publication-restricted licence; the underlying Pāli terminology is preserved here in italicised form. ↩

15. Saṃyukta-āgama (T0099《雜阿含經》Saṃyukta-āgamaT2, No. 99Guṇabhadra (Liu Song, ca. 435 CE)View on CBETA online reader ↗), trans. Guṇabhadra, Taishō vol. 2, fascicle 26, sūtra 647. The Pāli parallel is Saṃyutta Nikāya 48.10 (PTS SN v 197), cited here by PTS reference only on the same grounds noted at footnote ⁷; the abstract-factor definition of the concentration-faculty as cittass'ekaggatā is well-attested across Pāli abhidhammic literature. The two formulations — one experiential, one analytic — are not in contradiction; they are two complementary canonical strategies for defining the concentration-faculty, witnessing the underlying doctrinal content from two structurally different angles. ↩