WorkVasubandhu

Tri-svabhāva-nirdeśa

A magician's spell, a piece of wood and an elephant that is not there: the three natures of everything, in thirty-eight verses.

by Vasubandhu5 passages held

Sanskrit, the original language

Original title: Trisvabhāvanirdeśa
Original language: Sanskrit

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Overview

These thirty-eight verses never reached China. They survive in Sanskrit and in two Tibetan translations, and because their style differs from that of his other works, some scholars have asked whether Vasubandhu wrote them at all; most still read them as his, and one report makes them his last treatise. The book is a short independent poem devoted to a single Yogācāra doctrine: that every thing has three natures at once. The imagined nature is the way a thing appears to us, split into a perceiver and a perceived object that seem to exist apart. The dependent nature is the appearing itself, the mind's constructing, which arises from causes. The perfected nature is that same process with the split gone, the permanent absence of the imagined within the dependent. The three are one thing seen three ways, not three layers of the world, and the book's best-known image makes the point. A magician, by the power of a spell, makes a piece of wood appear as an elephant. The elephant stands for the imagined duality, its appearing shape for the mind's constructing, and the wood for suchness, things as they really are; to see that there is no elephant and to see the wood is a single act. The closing verses follow that act to its end. When no object is found, no mind that grasps it is found either; then come the ground of all things, mastery, and at last the awakening of a Buddha. Susumu Yamaguchi, the Japanese Buddhologist, edited the Sanskrit with a Tibetan version in 1931, and Louis de La Vallée Poussin, the Belgian scholar, set it beside both Tibetan translations soon after.

Key concepts

What is the dependent nature?

The dependent nature, paratantra, is what appears: the mind's own activity of constructing, which arises from causes and conditions rather than by itself. In the poem's image it is the elephant's shape that the spell makes visible. It is real as a process, which is why it can be purified, but what it shows is not what it is.

What is the imagined nature?

The imagined nature, kalpita, is how things appear: split into a perceiver and a perceived object that seem to stand apart. In the image it is the elephant itself. The poem calls it both existent and non-existent, because it is taken as existing while it does not exist at all, the way the elephant is seen but is not there.

What is the perfected nature?

The perfected nature, pariniṣpanna, is the permanent absence of the imagined split within what appears. It is not a further thing behind the world but the same appearing seen without the elephant. In the image it is that absence, the fact that there never was an elephant, and it is matched by the wood: things as they really are.

What does the spell stand for in the magician's image?

The spell is the root consciousness, the deep layer of mind that holds the seeds of experience and makes the rest appear. The poem's mapping is exact: the spell is the root consciousness, the wood is suchness, the elephant's shape is the mind's constructing, and the elephant is the duality of perceiver and perceived. The image therefore explains not only that the world is misread but what produces the misreading.

What is nonapprehension?

Nonapprehension, anupalambha, is the absence of grasping at an object, and the poem builds its path out of it in steps. Seeing that there is only mind, one ceases to apprehend outside objects; with no objects, one ceases to apprehend a mind that grasps them; with neither, one apprehends the ground of all things. That leads on to mastery and to full awakening.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Three Natures of One Thing

How can the same thing be a fiction, a real process and ultimate truth all at once, and what happens to a person who sees all three together?

Every thing, the poem holds, has three natures: what appears, the dependent nature, which arises from causes; how it appears, the imagined nature, split into perceiver and perceived; and the perfected nature, the permanent absence of that split within the appearing. Its image is a magician's spell that makes a piece of wood look like an elephant. Seeing that there is no elephant and seeing the wood happen at once, and when no object is found, no grasping mind is found either; the way then opens to the awakening of a Buddha.

three natures
nonduality
conceptual construction
imagination
dependent cognition
existence and nonexistence
conventional truth
nonapprehension
realization
purification
defilement
liberation
awakening
meditation
dharmadhatu
three bodies
consciousness
pedagogy

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Within this work

passages held: 5
distinct concepts: 18
by passages held, corpus-wide: #836

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

Abhidharmakośa-Bhāṣya (Abhidharmakośabhāṣya)
The standard Abhidharma textbook for later Buddhist scholars in China and Tibet. Scholars usually place it before the shorter works in which Vasubandhu argues that only the mind's own representations exist.
SA
Distinguishing the Middle from the Extremes (Madhyāntavibhāgakārikābhāṣya)
The one Yogācāra book on the shelf that is a commentary on someone else's verses: the teaching Vasubandhu received through his brother Asaṅga, explained line by line.
SA
Pañcaskandhaka-prakaraṇa (Pañcaskandhaprakaraṇa)
A pocket version of the inventory that his Abhidharmakośa-Bhāṣya argues through at length, redrawn on the Yogācāra scheme of his brother Asaṅga.
SA
Tri-svabhāva-nirdeśa (Trisvabhāvanirdeśa) you are here SA
Triṃśikā-kārikā (Triṃśikāvijñaptikārikā)
Thirty verses and no prose: the most compressed statement of his mature teaching on the mind, left for others to explain.
SA
Viṃśatikā-kārikā-vṛtti (Viṃśatikā)
Where his Thirty Verses lay out the system, this book defends its starting point, arguing against Buddhist and Brahmanical realists alike.
SA
十地經論 (Daśabhūmikabhāṣya)
The one book on his shelf that explains a scripture, the word of the Buddha and his bodhisattvas, rather than a treatise. Lost in Sanskrit, it is known through Chinese and Tibetan translations.
ZH

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