WorkVasubandhu

Viṃśatikā-kārikā-vṛtti

A realist's objections answered with dreams, hungry ghosts and hell, then atoms taken apart, to show that the world is only representation.

by Vasubandhu20 passages held

Sanskrit, the original language

Original title: Viṃśatikā
Original language: Sanskrit

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Overview

An objector speaks early, and Vasubandhu gives him the strongest case he can. If there are no objects outside the mind, why is a thing seen only in one place and at one time, why does everyone present see it, and why does it do what things do? The book is an independent treatise of about twenty verses with Vasubandhu's own prose commentary, and it sets out to prove one thesis, which its first lines take from a Mahayana sutra: the three realms of existence are mind only. Each objection meets an ordinary case. In a dream, too, things appear in fixed places and at fixed times. Hungry ghosts, beings reborn in torment by their own past greed, all see the same river full of pus, because their past actions are alike. The guardians who torture beings in hell appear to every one of the damned without being beings in their own right. And a dream can have a bodily effect, as a sleeper's seminal emission shows. Then the book turns to atoms. The Vaiśeṣika philosophers held that we perceive single wholes made of parts; others, Buddhists among them, that we perceive atoms, singly or massed. Vasubandhu argues that an atom joined on six sides to six others must have six parts, and so is no atom, and that without atoms neither wholes nor masses can be built. A late section claims that one mind can act on another without bodies, and cites a sutra in which the Buddha says the Daṇḍaka forest was emptied by the anger of sages. The last verse says he has proved representation-only as far as his own power reaches; in its full extent it is the domain of Buddhas alone. Sylvain Lévi, the French Indologist, found the Sanskrit of verses and commentary in Nepal in 1922 and published it in 1925.

Key concepts

What exactly does the Viṃśatikā deny exists?

It denies the outside object, artha in Sanskrit: a thing that exists apart from the mind and causes our awareness of it. It does not deny experience, colours seen or sounds heard, nor other minds. Its thesis is that every such awareness is a representation that arises without an outside object, the way a person with an eye disease sees floating hairs that are not there.

What are the realist's four objections?

The objector asks how, without outside objects, four facts can be explained. A sight is fixed to a particular place; it occurs at a particular time; it is shared by everyone present rather than by one stream of mind alone; and its object does what objects do, as food stills hunger. The first half of the book answers each in turn, mostly by showing that dreams and visions share the same features.

Which theories of atoms does the book refute?

Three, each a way of saying what we really perceive. The Vaiśeṣika philosophers said a single whole made of parts; others said single atoms; others again, atoms massed together, a view the book ascribes to the Kashmiri Vaibhāṣikas. Vasubandhu's reply targets the atom itself: if it joins others on six sides it has six parts, and if it has no sides it cannot join anything, so no mass could ever form.

How can one mind affect another if there are no bodies?

Through what the book calls dominant influence: one stream of mind becomes a decisive condition for change in another. Its examples are a demon's power to rob a person of memory or send them dreams, and the mental power of sages. The same mutual influence explains ordinary life too: hearing a good friend speak changes the listener's mind, though only representations pass between them.

Themes of the book

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

A Realist Answered by Dreams

If nothing exists outside the mind, why does the world behave so much like something that does? Each objection is met with a case where experience behaves that way without any object behind it.

The objector asks why, without outside things, a sight is fixed to one place and time, shared by everyone present, and able to do what things do. Vasubandhu answers with dreams, which are fixed in place and time too; with hungry ghosts, who all see the same river of pus because their past deeds are alike; with the guards of hell, who torment the damned without being beings at all; and with the dream that leaves a mark on the sleeper's body. The world, he concludes, is asleep, and cannot see that its objects are a dream until it wakes.

perception
consciousness-only
external world
dreams
karma
consciousness
causation
delusion
idealism
knowledge
memory
awakening

Enter a dialogue

Atoms That Fall Apart, Minds That Reach Each Other

If the outside world cannot be built from parts, what is left to explain how one person can affect another or know another's thoughts?

Vasubandhu turns from defence to attack. An atom joined to others on six sides must have six parts, and so is no atom; without atoms, neither the single wholes of the Vaiśeṣika philosophers nor the massed atoms of other schools can be built. What remains is a world of minds, and the last part of the book asks how they reach each other: why killing is still killing, how sages emptied a forest by their anger, and why even mind-readers do not know another mind as it is, as only a Buddha knows it.

atomism
atoms
mereology
space
substance
metaphysics
interpersonal causation
other minds
mind reading
mental action
no-self
sentience
buddhahood
self-knowledge
nondualism
pedagogy

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 20
distinct concepts: 38
by passages held, corpus-wide: #784

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “causation” and “consciousness-only”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 6 concepts, joined by 12 pairings. 16 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
causation	consciousness-only	5
external world	perception	5
consciousness-only	karma	4
consciousness-only	perception	4
causation	karma	3
causation	perception	3
consciousness	karma	3
karma	perception	2
causation	external world	1
consciousness	external world	1
consciousness	perception	1
consciousness-only	external world	1

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)
Counted by one report as his last work and doubted by some scholars as his at all, it takes the three natures that his longer books touch on and makes them the whole subject.
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) you are here 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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