唯識二十論 心要連讀

Right at its opening, this treatise sets down its thesis: the whole world — the realm of desire, the realm of form, the formless realm — is, in the last analysis, nothing but the presenting of consciousness; there is no real external object standing on its own, out there, independent of mind. This is not Vasubandhu's own invention; it is what the scriptures already say — "the three realms are nothing but mind." What matters is that little word "only": it denies only that "there is some thing outside the mind standing on its own"; it does not deny the richness of mental life itself. When a cognition arises, it of itself takes on the look of "as though an object were there" — the way a person with an eye-disease sees hairs floating and flies darting in the air, plain as day, while outside there is nothing at all.

No sooner is the thesis set down than the most forceful objection arrives — and in four neat parts: if the world is only mind, why is it still so orderly — fixed in place, fixed in time, seen in common by many beings, and made of things that still do real work? These four objections are the most natural attack on any "mind-only" position. Vasubandhu does not dodge them; he lays them out exactly as they stand — and, in the very stating of them, he slips in three examples of things "seen plain yet doing no work" (the eye-patient's hairs, the food and knives of a dream, the mirage-city), as if planting the seed of the answer inside the question itself.

He replies with just one line — "it is not that these four all fail to hold" — and with that he raises the whole table of answers for the first half of the treatise: from here on, with the dream illustration, the hell illustration, and the force of karma, he proves it point by point — that a world that is "nothing but consciousness" can have, all the same, a fixed space and time, public objects, and real efficacy. Read this opening set of four objections through, and you hold the map for reading the whole treatise.

In Verse 1 the opponent pressed consciousness-only with the "orderliness" of the world: if the world is only consciousness, what entitles it still to have a fixed place, a fixed time, many beings seeing one and the same object together, and things that can perform a real working? Verse 2 catches these four objections, and its way of answering argues no abstruse theory — it points only to an experience you and I both have: the dream.

Three illustrations each strike one point: in a dream there is no external object, and yet one sees the village and the men and women only at some place and some time — this answers "place is fixed, time is fixed"; a crowd of hungry ghosts, of one and the same karma ripening into one and the same fruit, see one river of pus together — this answers "many beings seeing one and the same object together," for one kind of karma draws on one kind of fruit, and common seeing now has its footing, with no need for a real river of pus outside the mind; the dream-emission losing vital essence and blood answers "how can a phantom perform a real working" — the dream-object is unreal, and yet on waking one really has lost vital essence and blood. The three illustrations prove it: without an external object, the four matters are present and vivid just the same.

One measure must be kept: the mechanism of common seeing is, in Vasubandhu's own words, just the four characters "one and the same karma ripening into one and the same fruit"; the "dominant force" added by later ancient masters is an extension, not the main text of this auto-commentary. And since, in stating the objections, Verse 1 had already placed the dream and the hungry ghosts into the question, Verse 2 only turns the same set of examples over to use as the answer — setting the trap and springing it are one and the same hand. The three illustrations are only the first step of "establishing trust by illustration": first they let you trust that "without an external object, yet with order" is possible; how it is possible waits to be fully told by the unified answer of the hell illustration in Verse 3, and by the descent to the force of karma and shared karma from Verse 4 onward.

Verse 2 used three illustrations — the dream, the hungry ghost, the nocturnal emission — each striking one of the four objections; Verse 3 says one hell is enough. The suffering beings, in one and the same place and at one and the same time, a whole crowd of them at once, see wardens of hell, vicious dogs, crows, and iron mountains rushing in to press upon and harm them — fixity of place, fixity of time, common seeing, real efficacy, all four senses made plain at one stroke, and yet within hell there are no real wardens. How does the common seeing come about? Vasubandhu's original text reads "by the force of the karmic retribution of shared karma, reinforced by [its] dominant force" (同業異熟增上力故) — note: Verse 2, speaking of hungry ghosts, reads only "the karmic retribution of shared karma" (同業異熟); only Verse 3, speaking of hell, adds the three words "dominant force" (增上力), and these three words are Xuanzang's main text.

Having set up the illustration, Vasubandhu does not stay his hand; riding the momentum he dismantles the claim that "the wardens are real sentient beings," with three strokes in a row: the wardens do not undergo the suffering of hell, so they cannot count as beings of hell, and if they pressed in upon one another the very name "hell" could not stand; if they were equal in bodily strength, the sufferers would not be reduced to utter terror, and besides the wardens themselves could not endure the blazing fire, so what strength would be left to press in upon others; nor can one say they are beings of another kind born to serve there. When the opponent retreats to "let animals and ghosts come to be the wardens," Vasubandhu answers only "this rescue does not hold" (此救不然), leaving it for the next verse to break.

Picking hell — the hardest scene, the one that looks most like "real external objects" — to break is precisely the touchstone of consciousness-only: even the wardens who press in to harm you are not real apart from consciousness, but are seen together through the dominant force of shared karma — if even the place that looks most like real existence can be broken, only then does consciousness-without-object stand firm. Verse 3 is a bridge: one illustration establishing the four senses, one stroke breaking the real warden; and the blade points toward the later conclusion that "all objects seen in common are called forth by karma and are nothing but the manifestation of consciousness."

Verse 3 refuted "the wardens are real sentient beings." The opponent steps back: since there are animals mixed in even among the gods, the hells too could have beings of the animal and hungry-ghost kind born there to serve as wardens. Verse 4 seals off this line with a key of "asymmetry" — the animal born among the gods, and the heavenly bliss it enjoys, come as a matched set (it first makes the karma that can call forth heavenly bliss, and once born there undergoes that bliss); but the wardens the opponent speaks of reside in the hells, yet do not undergo the hells' container-world suffering. Since they do not undergo the hells' suffering, they are not beings drawn to be born there by hell-karma, and this rescue-route is cut off.

The opponent gives way a second time, and very far: he simply stops saying the wardens are sentient beings, and says instead that it is the hell-beings' force of karma (the force of karma's dominance) that produces a kind of "specially-conditioned material substance" (the special elements), which puts forth strange shapes, can move hand and foot and brandish knives and staves, just as in the hells Ram Mountain opens and closes to crush people and the iron-hard forest's knife-thorns droop and rise. Vasubandhu's answer is just eight characters — "these matters are not entirely absent, yet it does not hold up to reason": those phenomena are not absent, but the explanation that "they are conjured by special material substances really existing outside the mind" does not hold.

What is intriguing is that this second rescue has been driven to the very threshold of consciousness-only — the opponent now even grants that the wardens are not real sentient beings, that they are manifested by the force of karma. Vasubandhu need only shift the landing-point of "manifested by the force of karma" from "special elements outside the mind" back to "consciousness itself," and consciousness-only is established. Yet he holds back his answer, marking only "does not hold up to reason," and leaves that affirmative step for Verse 5. Verse 4 is the climax of two forced retreats; "these matters are not entirely absent, yet it does not hold up to reason" is a bow drawn taut, the arrow not loosed until Verse 5's "the force of karma and the elements."

Verse 4 had pressed the opponent back to "the dominant force of karma produces a special set of great elements" — the force of karma produces a special kind of matter that manifests as the wardens of hell; at that point Vasubandhu only held the line with the phrase "it is not that the matter is wholly nonexistent, yet it does not stand to reason," without breaking it open. Verse 5 takes that step he had left blank, and takes it with just one counter-question: "If you grant that, by the force of karma, a special set of great elements is produced, giving rise to a transformation of just this kind — then what is there against [letting it happen] upon consciousness?" Since you already grant that the force of karma can make matter undergo a transformation of just this kind, then this same force of karma — letting it transform within "consciousness" — what is there against that?

This question does not argue over "whether there is a transformation" (the transformation is granted by both sides); it argues only over "where the transformation lands." The opponent wants to hang it on the great elements outside consciousness; Vasubandhu says that posits one extra layer of something real outside the mind. The very same karmic transformation, landing directly upon consciousness — the form of the wardens, their tormenting — is all consciousness's own manifesting: it both makes sense and saves a layer. And so the whole weight of the debate is, by this one lever of "karmic transformation," prised in a single move from "external objects are real" over to "what consciousness manifests." The first four verses were the refuting; Verse 5 is the establishing.

Notice: the auto-commentary to Verse 5 is short enough merely to restate the verse's counter-question once over, with no unfolding — this is the "weight on the verse, light on the commentary" of "the meaning being complete in the verse," and the eyes should go back to the verse itself. Verse 5 has only established that "the transformation can be upon consciousness"; it has not yet said "why it must be upon consciousness" — that step is handed to Verse 6 (the karmic perfuming is in the continuum of consciousness, so the fruit too ought to be in consciousness), and the counter-question that wheels in scriptural authority, "but the Buddha plainly speaks of the bases such as form-and-the-rest," is held back to Verse 7 to explain its hidden intent. Verse 5 is the pivot of §I where refuting turns into establishing.

Verse 5 established one half — "the transformation can be within consciousness." Verse 6 supplies the other half, using a plain piece of common sense: wherever the seed is sown, there the fruit grows. Vasubandhu exposes the opponent's flaw — you say the hell-wardens are a transformation of the great elements produced by the force of karma, yet you cannot but admit that "the perfuming of karma" is perfumed within the continuum of consciousness (the karmic perfuming, vāsanā, cannot be lodged in the great elements outside consciousness). Since the seed is within consciousness, the fruit too ought to come to fruition within consciousness; but you leave the seed in consciousness and hang the fruit outside it — "the perfuming of karma is in one place, yet [you] cling to the fruit being in another place" — sowing in one place, reaping in another: where is there such a principle? So "perfuming is in consciousness, the fruit is in consciousness; on what grounds do you refuse it?" This one question, relying on the line "cause and fruit are in the same place" that everyone must concede, nails the wardens' fruit firmly back inside consciousness.

Beaten on principle, the opponent plays his last card — hauling in the scriptures: "the Buddha plainly said there are the bases of colour and the rest (the eye-base, the colour-base… the twelve bases); if it were only consciousness transforming as though there were colour, why would the Buddha say so?" Vasubandhu neither denies that this is the Buddha's word nor sets himself against the Buddha; he simply delivers one verdict: "this teaching is not a ground, because it has a separate intent" — the Buddha's saying that there are the bases of colour and the rest has a separate purpose (a hidden intent), and cannot be taken as proof that "colour and the rest really exist." This is exactly the house-rule of the Yogācāra reading of scripture: the Buddha's words admit a distinction between the definitive meaning and the hidden intent; when one meets a passage that on its surface seems to assert the reality of external objects, one neither twists it by force nor refuses to acknowledge it, but discerns that it is spoken in accordance with a hidden intent.

As to what this hidden intent is, Vasubandhu leaves it to Verse 7, to be untied by analogy: "the Buddha's saying there are spontaneously-born beings is in fact spoken by hidden intent (pointing to the continuum of mind carrying on into the later life), not that there really are spontaneously-born beings." Verse 6 rams the "establishing" of §I home to the bottom (perfuming is in consciousness, the fruit is in consciousness), leaving only this one loose end — what is the hidden intent of the bases of colour and the rest? — which is precisely the thread-end leading into Verse 7, and on into §II, Verse 8, "by what hidden intent are the ten [bases] of colour and the rest spoken of."

At the end of Verse 6 the opponent brought the scriptures up to clinch the matter: "The Buddha said with his own mouth that there are objects such as colour-and-form!" Vasubandhu answered only with "this teaching is no proof, for it has a separate intent," without unfolding "just what that separate purpose was." Verse 7 is where this "hidden intent" is made clear — by an old example everyone in the Buddhist house recognizes: spontaneously-born beings.

The scriptures speak of "spontaneously-born beings" (beings who, by the force of karma, suddenly come into manifestation), yet every student of the Dharma knows the Buddha does not thereby mean there really is a "spontaneously-born self." The Buddha speaks by hidden intent, on the strength of "the mind-stream being unbroken and continuous, able to travel on into a later life": there is no "self of a being" transmigrating; there is only the mind-stream of consciousness, the chain of "dharmas" — karmic cause and recompense — continuing on into a later life — "no self of a being, but only the causes of dharmas." The Buddha's speaking of colour-and-form bases works on the same principle (the scripture is likewise so): the Buddha, in accordance with the teaching each being to be converted is at that time fit to receive, speaks by hidden intent of "there being colour-and-form bases," and does not really set up external dharmas such as colour-and-form as real.

This move is elegant: the opponent wanted to use "the Buddha said colour-and-form bases" to force consciousness-only to concede external objects; Vasubandhu turns and points at what the opponent himself admits — "the Buddha said spontaneously-born beings, yet not as a real self" — and asks: both alike are the Buddha speaking by hidden intent fitted to capacity, so on what ground make allowance for the one and hold the other to the letter? And the scriptural objection dissolves. What you carry away is a house rule for reading scripture: the Buddha's words have a distinction between the definitive sense and hidden intent; meeting a passage whose surface looks as though it speaks of external objects as real, one neither forces a change nor blindly trusts the letter, but judges whether it is spoken by hidden intent fitted to capacity (the standard lying in the Buddha himself, since "spontaneously-born beings" being hidden intent is commonly acknowledged). The moment Verse 7 appears, the answering of objections in §I is complete; its closing line, "with what hidden intent does he speak of the ten, colour-and-form and the rest," is the door to the scene-change, carrying the topic into §II — Verse 8 answers "consciousness arises from its own seed and turns as though [there were] an object," and Verse 9 leads on from this to the two selflessnesses. Verse 7 is both the capstone of §I and the starting-line of §II.

At the close of Verse 7, Vasubandhu asks himself: when the Buddha says "there are the colour-and-the-rest twelve sense-fields," on what hidden intent does he say it? Verse 8 answers head-on. This is no longer refuting but establishing — across the seven verses of §I the reality of external objects was refuted to the very end; from this verse on, Vasubandhu states positively "how consciousness-only houses the Buddha's twelve sense-fields."

Take "seeing colour-and-form": the consciousness that presents colour-and-form arises from its own seed, transforming under the convergence of the many conditions, and as it arises it takes on the look of a colour-appearance being there. The crux is that this one consciousness, at arising, carries two faces of its own — one facing inward, its seed as the cause of arising (the side of the faculty, the grasper); one facing outward, the colour-appearance it presents (the side of the object, the grasped). The Buddha, on the inward-facing seed, calls it the "eye sense-field"; on the outward-facing presented colour, calls it the "colour sense-field." The two faces of one consciousness are spoken of as one pair of sense-fields. Each of the six consciousnesses has its two faces of "seed and presentation," exactly six pairs, twelve in all — and that is the twelve sense-fields. "On the basis of this hidden intent, he speaks of the colour-and-the-rest ten."

So the twelve sense-fields the Buddha speaks of are not twelve kinds of independently real dharmas outside the mind, but the positing of each of the six consciousnesses' "inward-facing seed" and "outward-facing presentation." The Buddha did not misspeak; it is the proponents of external objects who took the "outer face" that consciousness carries of itself to be a real outer thing existing apart from consciousness. The "hidden intent of the colour-and-the-rest sense-fields" left hanging by Verses 6 and 7 is here fully accounted for. Vasubandhu goes on to ask himself "what surpassing benefit is there in speaking on this hidden intent," leaving it for Verse 9 to answer: once the twelve sense-fields are reduced to the two faces of consciousness, with not one an independent real master, the selflessness of person (no seeing, knowing self) and the selflessness of dharmas (no dharma real apart from consciousness) flow naturally out. Verse 8 is the pivot of §II, the first positive cornerstone of the turn from refuting to establishing. Hold this picture in mind: one consciousness arises carrying an inner and an outer face; the twelve sense-fields the Buddha speaks of are just the six pairs of faces of the six consciousnesses.

Relying on the teaching of the "twelve bases" (colour-and-form and the rest), one can enter into "the selflessness of the person" — the six sense-faculties meet the six sense-objects, the six consciousnesses arise, and within them there is no independent master who all along sees, who all along knows. Relying further on the teaching of "consciousness-only," one can enter into "the selflessness of dharmas" — even colour-and-form, taken to be a real external object, is only consciousness presenting itself "as though" colour-and-form; there is no dharma-mark of colour-and-form really existing apart from consciousness.

But "the selflessness of dharmas" is not "there is nothing at all." What it negates is only that layer of "self-nature, really existent" that ordinary beings forcibly fasten on; the ineffable dharma-nature realized by the Buddhas is not among what is negated. Even "consciousness-only" itself, when grasped as an object, is empty in its substance — to establish consciousness-only is not to set up another really-existent thing to replace external objects, but to empty out every clinging that grasps things as really existent, including the clinging that grasps consciousness-only as really existent.

So where consciousness-only stands is in breaking the clinging without sweeping away the existent: it breaks the self-nature of the false clinging, yet preserves the manifesting of the object-likenesses and the real substance of the dharma-nature. It is neither the realism that holds external objects to be really existent, nor the annihilationist view that sweeps everything away into nothing. This razor-thin middle line grows, by the time of the Triṃśikā, into the complete teaching of the three natures and the three non-natures.

Through §I (answering the objections) and §II (recovering the twelve sense-fields), Vasubandhu has been guarding and gathering in; from Verse 10 on he turns from defence to attack, dismantling head-on the claim that "the external object exists really, apart from consciousness." His method is hard: you say there really is, out there, a "colour-and-form" (色) that is being seen — then what exactly is its substance? Count as you may, there are only three possibilities, and Vasubandhu blocks them all in one breath.

First, it is "one block" (one) — like the Vaiśeṣikas' "whole-possessing form" (有分色, the integral form). Refuted: that whole would count only if it could be grasped on its own apart from the parts, but you cannot grasp it — "the substance of a whole-possessing form is other than the form of the parts, and so cannot be grasped" (有分色體異諸分色不可取). Second, it is "a heap of separate atoms" (many atoms). Refuted: a single atom is simply not something the eye can grasp — "the atoms, each on their own, cannot be grasped" (極微各別不可取). Third, it is "atoms pieced together" (aggregated, assembled). Refuted: for this to hold, the premise must be that "a single real atom" first stands firm — yet this very premise does not hold: "the principle of a single real atom is not established" (一實極微理不成), and once the foundation collapses, what is pieced up on it collapses too.

The three objections look like three roads, but all are tied to a single pillar: can the atom be established at all? "Aggregate" does not even set up a fresh argument — it points straight to "the atom is not established." The closing line "how can it not be [thus]?" (云何不成) hands the whole weight to the three verses below (v.11 refutes combining, v.12 closes off the retreat of assembled form, v.13 refutes directional parts, v.14 drives "one whole stretch of object" back into many parts — with walking, elephants and horses, water-insects, and the like — and seals it into consciousness-only). The measure to keep: what is refuted is the philosophical position "form as an external object existing really apart from consciousness," not the Buddha-taught colour-and-form sense-field (§II has already made plain that the colour-and-form sense-field is by hidden intent, the outward face of what consciousness transforms). Verse 10 is §III's declaration of war.

Verse 10 said the atom (極微 paramāṇu) cannot be established; Verse 11 takes apart "joining" head-on (how atoms could stick together into a thing). Vasubandhu lays out a minimal picture: take one atom, and stick one neighbour onto each of its six directions — up, down, east, west, south, north. The trouble arrives at once. Either it now has six mutually distinct contact-faces — "it ought to become six parts" (一應成六分) — yet the very definition of an atom is "no longer divisible," so it contradicts itself; or the six neighbours can only crowd into one and the same point, so that the place seven atoms occupy is as big as the place one does, and, pressed on, a whole heap of atoms is still only as big as a single one — "the aggregate ought to be [as small] as an atom" (聚應如極微). Would not the mountains, rivers, and the great earth then have to be so small as to be invisible? Yet they are plainly coarse and visible — again it contradicts itself. To stick is wrong, and not to stick is wrong too.

Pressed this far, the strongest debate-opponent of the time — the Vaibhāṣika masters of the country of Kaśmīra (a branch of the Sarvāstivāda) — makes a retreating move: atoms themselves have no directional parts and do not join at all (dodging the fault of six parts), but the "aggregated form" (聚色) that atoms heap up into has directional parts, and it is the aggregated form that joins. He shifts the responsibility for "joining" off the atoms and onto the aggregate.

Vasubandhu replies with just four words, "this too will not do" (此亦不然), and does not unfold it — because to refute it one must first puncture this: the aggregate is nothing but atoms, and if the atoms do not join, what does the aggregate have with which to join? And if the aggregate too has directional parts, it likewise cannot escape the earlier dilemma. This stroke he saves for Verse 12. Verse 11 is the first, and most intuitive, gate in the refutation of atoms: stick and faces are born, crowd and it shrinks.

At the end of Verse 11 the Vaibhāṣika master fell back to a defensive line: atoms do not stick to one another; it is the "aggregate-form" (聚色 — the coarse stuff heaped up out of atoms) that does the sticking. Verse 12 punctures this with one simple fact — the "aggregate" is not some other thing over and above the atoms; it just is the atoms. You say "atoms don't stick, the aggregate-form does," but since the aggregate-form just is that heap of atoms, and the atoms do not stick, then who exactly is "the sticker"? 「極微既無合，聚有合者誰」 ("Since the atoms do not combine, who is the combiner that makes the aggregate combine?") There is nowhere for the responsibility to be pushed.

If the opponent then falls back to "well then, the aggregate-form doesn't stick either," Vasubandhu says: you may, but with this retreat you have dismantled your own reason — earlier you said "atoms don't stick because they have no spatial parts," but now the aggregate-form plainly does have spatial parts and yet too does not stick, which shows that "sticking or not" and "having or not having spatial parts" are simply two different matters, 「不由無方分」 ("not because of having no spatial parts"). Both ways blocked, "a single real atom is not established" (一實極微不成).

By this point the road of "combining" has been cut off, and Vasubandhu does not let up; he sets up an even more basic lever: does this atom in fact have "spatial parts" at all? 「若許極微有分無分，俱為大失」 ("if you grant the atom has parts or has no parts, both alike are a grave fault") — having spatial parts is wrong, having none is wrong too, and 「所以者何」 ("Why so?") hands the weight over to Verse 13. Grasp the key that takes least effort — "the aggregate is not other than the atoms" (聚不異微): Yogācāra refutes atomism not by setting up some further abstruse principle, but by biting down hard on the fact even the opponent cannot deny — "the heap just is the atoms themselves" — so that every step of his retreat leads right back to where he started. Verse 13 then seals off "spatial parts" as well, and the refutation of atoms becomes an ironclad case.

Verses 11 and 12 took apart the atom's "combining"; Verse 13 dismantles the most fundamental pillar of all — directional parts (方分: whether an atom has faces in a direction). A dilemma: if it has directional parts, then the atom is six directional parts assembled together, already "many," and is not the indivisible single thing — "by reason it should not be one" (理不應成一); if it has no directional parts, Vasubandhu points straight at the sun and asks — the sun has just risen and shines upon an atom; how could the side of that atom turned away from the light have a shadow? For there to be a shadow there must be a distinction between a light-facing face and a face away from the light; if the atom has no directional parts it ought to be shone through whole and give rise to no shaded face — "there being no remaining part the light does not reach" (以無餘分光所不及) — yet things plainly do have shadows. The same move applies to "mutual obstruction": with no directional parts there is no face to block another, so how could atoms obstruct one another? Not obstructing, they could pile into one and the same place, and we slide back into the old ailment of "a whole heap being no bigger than a single one."

The opponent wants to push the shadow and the obstruction onto "aggregate-form," but Vasubandhu turns it back in one stroke: the aggregate is not something apart from the atom (the aggregate is not other than the atom) — where would you get an aggregate distinct from the atom to cast a shadow and obstruct? "The aggregate is not other, so there is no second thing" (聚不異無二); pushing it onto the aggregate is no push at all. And so, arranged as atom or as aggregate, "neither is a real single thing" (俱非一實), and atomism utterly falls apart.

Having finished refuting the atom, Vasubandhu lays the same measuring-rod at once against that patch of blue before your eyes (the real form, such as blue, confronting eye and the rest), asking whether it is one or many: say many, and it repeats all the atom's faults; say one, and that too does not hold — just how it does not hold he leaves to Verse 14, told with everyday examples of walking, elephants and horses, water-creatures. Verse 13 is the iron hammer of §III: with one shadow under the sun and one ordinary case of mutual obstruction, it smashes the last redoubt, "the partless atom." Hold that picture in mind — the sun shines, and the partless atom can give rise to no shadow.

Verses 10–13 took the abstract atom apart; the end of Verse 13 shifted the question to that patch of blue before your eyes: is it "one indivisible solid block" or is it "many"? Verse 14 refutes "it is one solid block," and the refutation is utterly down-to-earth — it lays out four small matters you experience every day. One — walking: if the ground were one solid block, lifting a foot should tread on the whole expanse at once, yet you have to cross it step by step (walking in sequence). Two — "arrived" and "not yet arrived" at the same time: at one moment you have reached this end and not that one — how can one thing be both reached and not reached? Three — elephants and horses with gaps: on one patch of ground many elephants and horses stand with spaces between them; if it were "one," this one and that could not be told apart and no gap would be seen. Four — the hard-to-see little water-insect: a tiny water-insect shares a place with a coarse thing; if it were "one" and so equal in size, they should be the same size — yet the little insect is small and hard to see. Four small matters, each one proving: that patch of blue before your eyes is by no means one solid block.

Being not one, it must be many — divisible down to the atom; yet the atom was already proved, in Verses 10–13, not to be real. Both ends come up empty: say "one," and the four matters knock it back; say "many," and the atom is unreal. Only one conclusion is left: the "faculty" and the "object" that would exist as real apart from consciousness cannot be established at all — 「由此善成唯有識義」 ("by this, the principle that there is consciousness only is well established"). The five verses of §III come here to their fullness.

Vasubandhu closes by leaving a loose end: the opponent still has one last word — "but I see the external object with my own eyes right now (我今現證如是境, 'I now realize, by direct perception, an object like this')." Vasubandhu first points out the rule — 「諸法由量刊定有無，一切量中現量為勝」 ("dharmas are settled as existing or not by means of knowing; among all means of knowing, direct perception carries the most weight") — granting the challenge is weighty enough; then he lays down three words, 「此證不成」 ("this proof does not hold"), leaving the head-on refutation to §IV. Verse 14 with one hand draws in the net (the refutation of external objects complete, consciousness-only set up) and with the other opens a new round (pushing direct perception to the front of the stage): the abstract atom-theory is refuted with walking and water-insects; the living "I saw it!" is left for the dream to refute (Verse 15, direct perception is like a dream).

§III took the "substance" of external objects apart, clean and complete; yet the opponent still grips the most intuitive card of all: "The argument I cannot win — but right at this instant I am plainly seeing things with my own eyes; surely this 'direct perception' (現量) cannot be faked?" §IV, beginning from Verse 15, pulls out this card, and Vasubandhu delivers two strokes.

First stroke, the dream: "the present feeling of seeing is like that in a dream" (現覺如夢等). When you dream, in the dream too you "see" vivid and distinct — in that moment your present feeling of seeing is not the least bit vague, yet in the dream there is no external object whatsoever. Since "having a present feeling of seeing" is no guarantee of "having an external object" (the dream being the counter-example), what entitles your waking "I am now seeing" to prove, in reverse, that something is really out there?

Second stroke, the time-gap: what says "I am now attaining this colour through direct perception" is the judgment of mind-consciousness, and mind-consciousness must wait for that moment to go by before it can pass this judgment; yet by momentary arising-and-ceasing, by the time mind-consciousness raises the thought "I saw it," the eye-consciousness that was truly seeing one instant before has long since passed, and the object that was seen has long since ceased too. So at the moment "I saw it" holds good, the seeing and the seen are in fact both already gone — the "seeing and seen both present in the moment" that you want have both passed at both ends, so "how can one grant that there is direct perception?" (寧許有現量)

The opponent falls back on "first undergoing, then recalling" (one must have undergone it first, and only afterward can recall it, which shows there was an external object earlier); Vasubandhu only marks "the reasoning does not hold either," leaving the head-on breaking to Verse 16 (recollection in fact arises from consciousness, not from an external object). The move of Verse 15: do not contest "whether or not you saw it," only point out that "seeing does not equal something really being out there," and then that "by the time you say you saw it, the seeing is long past." The dream illustration, and this retreat of "first undergoing, then recalling," are what §IV will use again and again, and break head-on, in what follows.

Verse 15 broke "I am seeing it right now." The opponent steps back and brings out "memory": the present moment may not count, but I do remember it afterwards — and since I remember, there must have been, before, a real external object that was experienced; so "experienced first, recalled later" (先受後憶) can prove the reality of an external object. Verse 16 takes this fallback apart.

Vasubandhu pierces it in one line: "Just as with the object-seeming cognition, from this arises memory" (如說似境識，從此生憶念). Eye-consciousness of itself "appears as though an external object were there" (似外境現), even though outside there is no real object; and the later discriminating mind-consciousness that says "I remember just now seeing…" is nothing more than the trace left by that "object-seeming cognition" (似境識) of the previous moment, appearing again as though it were that object. The whole chain — the earlier cognition seeming to have an object, the later recollection seeming to have that earlier object — is completed from start to finish within consciousness, with no need for an external object inserted as its source. So "I remember" proves only "there was previously an object-seeming cognition," not "there was previously an external object." To prove an external object by memory is to plug into the wrong source.

The opponent switches tactics and uses the dream to turn the tables: on waking one knows for oneself that the dream just now was unreal — so if the waking world too is consciousness transforming with nothing real, why does the waking person not know for themselves that what is before them is also unreal? Since one does not know it for oneself, on what grounds say it is, like a dream-object, wholly without real object? Vasubandhu first holds it down with "this too is no proof" (此亦非證) — "while awake one cannot know it for oneself" is not because the object is real, but because the person has not yet woken up to that point (only when true awakening is present does one know for oneself that it is unreal), leaving the head-on resolution to Verse 17. The key to grasp: press the question "where does memory actually come from" — you take memory to be a stamp pressed by an external object; in fact it is only an echo that consciousness has left of itself.

At the end of Verse 16 the opponent makes a checkmating move with the dream: on waking one knows of oneself that what just happened was unreal; if the waking world too is a transformation of consciousness with no real object, why does a waking person never feel that what is before their eyes is unreal? Verse 17 catches it head-on with half a verse — "while not yet awake, one cannot know that what is seen in a dream is not there" (未覺不能知，夢所見非有).

The answer is hidden in the very figure of "dream": while you are in the dream, not yet awake, do you know it is unreal? You do not — only on waking do you look back and know. So "not knowing within a dream that it is unreal" is not at all because the dream is real; it is purely because the person has not yet awakened. Carry it over to the waking world — you do not feel that what is before your eyes is unreal not because it is real, but because you are still inside a deeper dream, not yet awakened to that point. Vasubandhu presses the figure to its limit: beings, through the long aeons, "falsely discriminate and perfume the habit until it is ripe and dulled" (虛妄分別、串習惛熟), just like being steeped in a long dream from which one does not wake, where all that is seen is not real, yet "not having attained true awakening, one cannot know it of oneself." So "while awake, not knowing of oneself that it is unreal" is, far from a counter-proof, exactly in accord with consciousness-only.

Most precious is that point of awakening: what is "true awakening"? It is only when the supramundane "non-discriminating cognition" (無分別智) — which counteracts false discrimination — arises that it is called true awakening, like a dreamer suddenly opening his eyes; and when the "mundane purified cognition" (世間淨智, the subsequently-attained cognition) that arises after it is present, one then illumines as it truly is that the objects are not real, completely equal in meaning to "knowing, on waking, that the dream was unreal." The consciousness-only saying that "objects are not real" is no mere verdict of the lips, but has a personally-realizable point of awakening — until you reach it you naturally do not know of yourself; once you reach it you naturally know, as naturally as waking from a dream. With this one answer, the debate over epistemology is led back onto the right road of practice-realization. At the close, the opponent shifts the battle-line and sets a scriptural-proof objection (objects are transformed by one's own consciousness — how does the perfuming of teacher and friend hold?); Vasubandhu replies only "it is not that it cannot hold," the positive answer being Verse 18's "the two consciousnesses, turning upon each other, mutually enhance." The plainest and deepest line: you ask why, while awake, it does not feel unreal? Because you have not yet truly awakened.

At the close of Verse 17 the opponent raised a very practical challenge: on your account that everything is the transforming of one's own consciousness, then what becomes of such formative influences as "drawing near a good spiritual friend and hearing the right teaching, consorting with bad friends and hearing wrong views"? The teacher is a person on the outside, the teaching is words on the outside — without these outward objects, how can perfuming come about at all?

Vasubandhu replies with only half a verse — "through the force of reciprocal predominance, the two consciousnesses come to mutual determination" (展轉增上力，二識成決定) — and the key is hidden in an often-overlooked distinction: conditions are not of one kind only. The opponent takes it for granted that for a teacher to influence you he must be the "objective support" (所緣) of your mind — there must be an external real thing pushed into your mind. Vasubandhu says it need not be so: the teacher influences you by way of another kind of condition — the "predominant condition" (增上緣 adhipati-pratyaya — a contributing condition that lends force and does not block the way). Person and person are two continuous streams of consciousness, already all along predominant over one another: the moment a wholesome (or unwholesome) consciousness stirs in my stream, it can, in a predominant way, cause the corresponding consciousness in your stream to arise. Good friends and good teachings perfume you toward the good, bad friends and wrong teachings perfume you toward the bad — all by the predominant arousal of consciousness upon consciousness, "each coming to be settled as determined, and not through any external object" (各成決定不由外境).

What matters is this: consciousness-only has not abolished the teaching and influence of teachers and friends; it has only seen it accurately — teaching is not an external real thing carried into your mind, but a mutual stirring between two consciousnesses. So "everything is nothing but consciousness" not only does not hinder the way of the teacher, it explains all the more truly "why a good teacher can transform a person, and a bad friend can lead one astray." At the close, the opponent puts him in check once more: you keep comparing dreaming to waking — but the good and bad deeds done in a dream and the ones done while awake plainly do not bring the same fruits of pleasure and pain later on; both alike are consciousness arising without an external object, so how can the fruits differ? This is held over for Verse 19 to answer. The key: tell apart the "predominant condition" (增上緣) and the "objective-support condition" (所緣緣) — a teacher can reach you not because he is outside your mind, but because your two streams of consciousness have all along been predominant over each other.

At the end of Verse 18 the opponent seizes on a gap: you keep saying dream and waking are alike consciousness arising, alike without any external object — yet killing someone in a dream does not send you to hell, while killing someone awake costs you your life in return. Same consciousness-transformation, no external object either way — how can the fruit differ so greatly? The challenge presses consciousness-only with the gravity of karmic requital.

Vasubandhu's reply is only half a verse — "the mind is impaired by sleep; dream and waking differ in their fruit" — and the key is the word "impaired." The mind in a dream is impaired by sleep, its force feeble and torpid; the waking mind has its force intact, clear and strong. One and the same evil deed, done by a torpid dream-mind and by a clear waking mind — the strength or weakness of the very mental force that does the deed is worlds apart from the start. The fruit of the karma (its ripening, 異熟 vipāka) is light or heavy, and the difference arises precisely from this "force of the mind that does the deed," not from whether there is an external object. The opponent meant to use a difference in fruit to prove a difference in object; Vasubandhu turns it back and traces the difference in fruit to mental force — the lightness or heaviness of karmic requital was always to be measured by mind, not by outward things, and consciousness-only comes out the cleaner for it.

Having answered the difference in fruit, the opponent brings up the sharpest blade — taking life: if there is only consciousness and no real things such as body and speech, how is "a sheep killed by a butcher" established? If the sheep does not die by being really, actually harmed, on what grounds does the butcher bear the offence of taking life? This drags consciousness-only from speculation onto the ethical ground. Vasubandhu neither dodges nor answers within this verse: he leaves "how killing is possible with no external object" to Verse 20 (the life-faculty cut off by the transformation of another's consciousness), and "mental karma surpassing body and speech" to Verse 21's scriptural proof of the Buddha questioning Upāli. Remember the turn — the opponent wanted to use a difference in fruit to prove an external object, but Vasubandhu proves the reverse: it is precisely because all is mind-only that the lightness and heaviness of karmic requital can be measured so exactly.

At the close of Verse 19 the opponent lays down his sharpest blade: if there is only consciousness and no real things such as body and speech, then how is "the butcher killing the sheep" established at all? If the sheep is not really and truly harmed to death, on what grounds does the butcher bear the guilt of killing? This goes straight for the vitals — the deed of killing and the guilt of killing are a hard bottom-line of the Dharma, and if consciousness-only cannot establish them, it collapses. Verse 20 meets the challenge head-on.

Vasubandhu first sees through "killing": killing, in the last analysis, is just "making another's life-faculty be cut off," and the question becomes — is the power of consciousness strong enough to make another sentient being's life-faculty be cut off? He says: it is. He lays the ground with things everyone has heard of: a ghost's will-force can make a person lose their senses, have nightmares, be possessed; one possessed of supernormal power, with a single movement of the will, can make others dream of all kinds of scenes — which shows that the power of one consciousness can really and truly alter another sentient being's body-and-mind. He then adduces two cases recorded in scripture: Mahākātyāyana (a disciple of the Buddha), through the force of his wish, made King Sāraṇa and others dream strange things; the ascetic seer of the wilderness, through the force of his angered intent, made King Vemacitrin dream strange things. What stirred the kings' minds was purely the "intent" of the sage / the seer — not a hand, not a knife — and since the force of intent can shake another's body-and-mind to this degree, killing — "through a transformation in another's consciousness making another's life-faculty be cut off" — is naturally established.

Finally he settles "death" too in consciousness-only terms: death is not some external lump of flesh being destroyed, but the "shared lot of beings" (the station that sustains the continuity of one lifespan's like kind of life), through an alteration of consciousness, undergoing the cutting-off of its continuum — death too is a transformation of consciousness. So the whole ethical chain joins seamlessly: killing is this consciousness's transformation making that one's life-faculty be cut off; death is that one's shared-lot being cut off through an alteration of consciousness; the deed of killing is real, the guilt of killing is real, and throughout no single real thing outside the mind is needed as an intermediary. The thread laid down is "the force of intent is, after all, this great" — which Verse 21 will push to the utmost with the scriptural proof of the Buddha questioning Upāli, establishing that "the punishment of intent is the gravest offense, heavier than that of body and speech." One reversal to hold: killing is not a knife touching flesh; it is one consciousness moving another.

Verse 20 used "the transformation of another's cognition" to establish "killing is accomplished by consciousness"; in Verse 21 Vasubandhu no longer argues the matter himself, but brings out a passage of question-and-answer from the Buddha's own mouth to make it firm — this is the falling of the gavel on the whole ethical debate of §IV, the weightiest of all.

The Buddha once, in order to establish that "the penalty of mind (the karma made by mind) is the gravest crime, and graver than the penalty of body and speech," deliberately put a question back to the householder Upāli: "Have you ever heard why the Daṇḍaka forest, the Mātaṅga forest, and the Kaliṅga forest — these three great forests — all became places empty and still, without a soul?" Upāli answered: "I have heard it was on account of the seers' wrath." What turned three great forests into empty stillness, and brought countless sentient beings to their deaths, was the seers' "mind" (their wrathful heart) — not hand, not mouth. Someone wants to branch off and rescue the case: in truth it was that spirits and demons, revering the seers, killed in their stead, not by the seers' mind alone. Vasubandhu drives it back: if it really were the bodily act of spirits and demons that did the killing, how could the Buddha still take this case to prove "the penalty of mind is graver than body and speech"? The Buddha plainly used it to establish "the penalty of mind is gravest" — which shows the Buddha's meaning was just this: it was precisely the seers' wrath that made those sentient beings die. This principle is skillfully established.

And so the whole of §IV comes fully to ground: from the objection of killing a sheep, to the transformation of another's cognition severing the life-faculty, to the Buddha's own statement that the penalty of mind is gravest, layer upon layer it is proven that killing, death, and even the gravest karma are in essence all matters of mind and consciousness, not awaiting any real thing outside the mind. Consciousness-only does not abolish karma and ethics; it explains "mind is the root of all dharmas" more deeply still. Vasubandhu's close is forthright — he turns back to set a difficulty against his own thesis: does the knowledge of others' minds know another's mind or not? If it knows, there seems to be an external object and consciousness-only is broken; if it does not know, it is not the knowledge of others' minds. He gives half an answer first — "though it knows another's mind, it does not know it as it really is" — leaving the complete resolution to Verse 22. Hold on to the weight in that question from the Buddha's own mouth — what emptied the three forests was a single "mind"; mind weighs more than hand and mouth. 〔This verse is the scriptural proof for the Buddha's own established meaning, faithfully relayed, making no further ethical judgment.〕

At the close of Verse 21, Vasubandhu sets a difficulty for consciousness-only with his own hand: Buddhism has "the knowledge of others' minds" (para-citta-jñāna) — a noble one can know what is in another's mind. Does this "knowing another's mind" count for anything or not? Both horns look like trouble: say it does not know, and does it still deserve to be called "the knowledge that knows others' minds"? Say it does know, and has not "another's mind" become an object known, as though there really were an object outside the mind — and is consciousness-only not thereby broken?

Vasubandhu's solution turns on a single careful word — "though it knows another's mind, it is yet not as it really is." The knowledge of others' minds does know another's mind, but it knows it not as it truly is; the "knowing" is not false, yet it carries a film not yet cleansed away, and is not an illumination of things as they really are. Consciousness-only is unharmed: what is known is not an "other's mind" existing really apart from consciousness, but a mark bearing a false external appearance, presented by one's own consciousness. Most ingenious is what he reaches for to prove it — he turns and points back, "just like the knowledge of one's own mind": you do not know another's mind as it really is — but do you, then, know your own mind as it really is? Just the same: not as it really is. Why is even self-knowledge not as it really is? "By reason of not-knowing" — a film of root ignorance lying covering it there. The knowledge of others' minds and the knowledge of one's own mind alike are covered over by this same film of not-knowing, and neither can illumine the "ineffable object" (the marklessness beyond speech) that the Buddha's pure knowledge illumines.

"Not as it really is" gets stuck at two points: first, "appearing falsely as though external" (what is known always carries a guise of being out there); second, "the discrimination into grasped and grasper not yet cut off" (the two graspings of knower and known not yet cut off). Only upon becoming a Buddha, the two graspings forever cut off, does knowing truly become knowing as it really is. So the dilemma is resolved whole: the knowledge of others' minds knows another's mind without running against consciousness-only (what is known is a semblance bearing the two graspings), and its not being as it really is is precisely because the two graspings are not yet cut off — which is, once more, a confirmation of consciousness-only. A difficulty that looked like an attack on consciousness-only is caught and turned into yet one more proof of it. The closing line restrains the author — "the doctrinal import of consciousness-only is without bound… apart from the Buddha, who could discern it fully and at large" — leading into the concluding verse of Verse 23. A backhand stroke: you say a noble one's reading of minds is as though there were an object outside the mind? Yet you do not even read your own mind as it really is — and "not as it really is" is precisely because that pair of "grasper and grasped" in your mind and mine has not yet been set down.

By the time he reaches this point, Vasubandhu has accomplished a great work: he has established the thesis of "the three realms are nothing but consciousness," answered to the full the four objections, dismantled inch by inch the atomism of external objects, broken the clinging to direct perception — "but I see it with my own eyes" — set in place that it is another's consciousness [the deed of killing destroys] and that the mental penalty weighs heaviest, and closed the last breach by accounting for the "knowledge of others' minds." The thesis is fully furnished, the argument complete. And yet what he gives the whole treatise to close on is four lines of humble withdrawal: "I have, within my own power, established the principle of consciousness-only in outline; herein, every kind in its entirety is hard to conceive, the range of a Buddha." — I have only, within the measure of my own power, established the principle of consciousness-only in outline; the perfect discernment of every kind herein is hard to conceive, hard to discuss, a domain only a Buddha can range.

This is no polite phrase at the end of the text; it is the necessary outcome of the doctrine of Verse 22: the "knowing" of whoever has not yet become a Buddha is all not-in-accord-with-reality (the two graspings not yet severed, unable to illuminate the ineffable domain that a Buddha's pure cognition illuminates); and Vasubandhu composed his treatise relying on precisely the cognition of discursive thought and discrimination, which itself stands within the station of "not-in-accord-with-reality" — so the principle of consciousness-only it establishes, however rigorous, can only be the outline of the thesis, never the perfect discernment of "every kind." Thus "established in outline · referred home to the Buddha" is no self-belittling, but an honest placing of himself within the station of discriminative cognition: what I can do is to set up the framework by reasoning and break false clingings; the boundless, exhaustive discernment must rest on the Buddha-cognition that is "without obstruction with respect to every object and to the knowledge of every kind."

These four lines set a stature for the expounders of later ages: to dare to establish a thesis by reasoning and break clingings without fear is the courage of one who argues; to know that what one accomplishes is limited and to refer the ultimate home to the Buddha is the clarity of one who argues. Across twenty-two verses Vasubandhu presses on keen-edged; the final verse bows down and refers all home to the Buddha — a treatise that breaks clingings, ending with "establishing, yet not clinging," is itself a living demonstration of consciousness-only's "breaking clinging without dismissing existence." The end-of-scroll inscription reads "Viṃśatikā, one scroll" — the treatise is complete; what it leads on to is the whole unfolding of Yogācāra (the Triṃśikā disclosing the true and building the body of the system, the Cheng weishi lun bringing it to grand completion). The bearing of this close — the one who can set up the whole apparatus of consciousness-only says, at the last, "I have only, within my own power, established it in outline."