Chapter Five: Consciousness-Only and No External Objects—The Core Arguments¶

The thesis and the steering wheel. The Twenty Verses is the school’s defense addressed to others. It opens by establishing its thesis: ‘The Mahāyāna position that the three realms are consciousness-only is established because the sūtras say that the three realms are mind-only; mind, mentation, consciousness, and cognition are differences of name.’ The two sentences immediately following matter more than the thesis: ‘Here, “mind” is intended to include mental factors. “Only” excludes external objects without rejecting associated factors. When internal consciousness arises, it appears as an external object, like someone with impaired vision seeing hairs, flies, and the like; in this there is not the slightest real referent.’¹

The word ‘excludes’ carries a type marker: external objects are excluded; mental factors and mechanisms are retained. This half-sentence is the treatise’s steering wheel. From the first line establishing its thesis, consciousness-only and no external objects describes itself as an exclusionary proposition, taking on no obligation to establish a new foundation. The visual-disorder analogy shares its source with Chapter Two’s three natures but uses its other side here. The hairs and flies seen in impaired vision have ‘not the slightest real referent.’ This says the appearing characteristics lack reality, not that the consciousness in which they appear lacks reality.

Four objections and four replies. The four external objections all concern standards of acceptance at level E2. The objection verse: ‘If consciousness has no real objects, / determination of place and time, / nondetermination of continuities, / and effective action should not be possible.’ The reply: ‘Place and time are determined as in dreams; / bodies are not restricted, as with ghosts / jointly seeing rivers of pus and the like; / there is effective action, as with loss in dreams.’²

The reading: the actual issue in this exchange is whether the shared character of experience and regularity need an external object as guarantor. Vasubandhu answers no: shared karma and the regularity of continuities suffice. The guarantor changes, but the bills are still honored. This is a redistribution of work within level E2, moving in the same direction as the preservation theorem.

One hell analogy covers all four points, followed by the treatise’s pivotal blow. After the four analogies, the commentary establishes another: ‘All are as in hell, / jointly seeing wardens and the like, / who can inflict torment; / thus all four points are established.’ Its reason is that in hell, ‘although there are no wardens and the like that are real sentient beings, through the predominating force of the maturation of those beings’ shared karma, many continuities at the same place and time all jointly see wardens, dogs, crows, iron mountains, and other things.’³ One analogy does four jobs, hence its comprehensive role.

Why are wardens not real sentient beings? The commentary gives four reasons. They do not undergo hell’s suffering and therefore are not hell beings. If they tormented one another, neither side would count as hell beings. If their size and strength were equal, they should not be extremely afraid of one another. If they themselves could not bear the flames of the iron ground, how could they torment others? If the opponent tries to rescue the position by saying, ‘Just as there are animals in heaven, there are animals and ghosts in hell serving as wardens,’ the commentary replies that animals born in heaven must have karma that brings the pleasure of that receptacle world. Wardens do not undergo the suffering of hell’s receptacle world, so the rescue fails.³

The opponent retreats to a final position: these are distinct great elements produced by the predominating force of karma, with differences of shape, color, size, and strength, upon which the name ‘warden’ is designated. The pivotal blow falls here: ‘If you allow that through karmic power / distinct great elements arise / and undergo such transformations, / why not allow this of consciousness?’⁴ If you already allow karma to transform distinct great elements into being, why not allow karma to transform consciousness?

The next verse identifies the inconsistency: ‘Karma perfumes one place, / yet you maintain that its fruit is elsewhere. / What reason is there not to allow / fruit in the consciousness that is perfumed?’ The commentary explains that the karma of hell beings should ‘reasonably be admitted to perfume the continuum of consciousness, not elsewhere,’ yet the opponent places the fruit elsewhere. Where perfuming occurs, they refuse fruit; where no perfuming occurs, they insist on fruit. What is the reason for this?⁴

The form of this blow must be recorded clearly: the burden of proof shifts here. To explain shared seeing and suffering, the opponent has already admitted that karmic power can manifest an entire set of instruments of torment. Vasubandhu merely changes the object of transformation from great elements to consciousness, adding no step to the mechanism. The remaining question thus changes from ‘Does consciousness-only make sense?’ to ‘What entitles you to stop halfway through the same mechanism?’

The objection from scripture, teaching with a hidden intent, and the Twenty Verses’ own clauses against reification. The opponent now turns to sacred words. If there is only consciousness and no external matter, why did the Buddha teach the sense bases of visible form and so forth? The commentary replies through hidden intent: ‘With a hidden intent, / in accordance with those to be taught, / the Blessed One spoke of bases such as visible form, / as he spoke of spontaneously born beings.’ It also gives an affirmative explanation: ‘Consciousness arises from its own seed / and unfolds with an object-like appearance. / To establish internal and external bases, / the Buddha spoke of these as ten.’⁵ Consciousness appearing as visible form arises through a transformation from its own seed. On the basis of that seed and the appearing form, the Buddha speaks respectively of the eye-base and visible-form-base. The teaching of twelve bases is thus explained.

The commentary also makes the purpose of hidden intent clear: the teaching of twelve bases brings entry into the no-self of the person who repeatedly takes up destinies; consciousness-only brings entry into the no-self of grasped dharmas. The crucial point is the self-limitation that follows, which readers of this chapter must examine word by word: ‘If knowing that all dharmas are absent in every respect is entry into the no-self of dharmas, then consciousness-only too is ultimately absent; what is being established?’ The commentary answers that the no-self of dharmas means ‘understanding the no-self of dharmas whose distinctions of own-nature are imagined and grasped by foolish ordinary people,’ not absence in every respect. It immediately adds: ‘This very consciousness-only nature, as grasped by another consciousness, is also absent in its underlying reality; this is called the no-self of dharmas.’ A final sentence pins the point down: ‘For this reason, establishing the teaching of consciousness-only universally enables entry into the no-self of all dharmas, without denying existence in every respect.’⁵

Together these three sentences form a complete self-restraint. First, consciousness-only does not claim absence in every respect; it is not nihilism. Second, if consciousness-only nature itself is grasped by another consciousness, its underlying reality is also absent. Third, the purpose of establishing the teaching is entry into the no-self of dharmas, not the establishment of another existent. The second sentence matters especially: it places the term ‘consciousness-only’ itself on the inventory of what may not be grasped as real. The Twenty Verses here answers half of Chapter Eight’s question for itself in advance.

Refuting external objects: from wholes to atoms, then to commonsense objects. The commentary exhaustively lists three possible forms of external object: ‘It must either be one, as the Vaiśeṣikas hold that there is a material whole possessing parts; or many, as those who hold that many really existent atoms are each separately objects; or the combination and aggregation of many atoms.’⁶ The three forms are refuted in turn.

One fails because a material whole different from its material parts cannot be apprehended. Many fails because individual atoms cannot be apprehended. Combination and aggregation fail because ‘a single real atom cannot be established by reason.’ Why does the atom fail? The first refutation: ‘If an atom joins six, / the one must become six parts. / If it shares one place with the six, / the aggregate must be like an atom.’ Joining an atom in each of six directions would make six parts: one place cannot contain two. If all six occupy one point, aggregated matter has only the size of one atom, and ‘aggregated matter too should then be invisible.’⁶

The rescue offered by the Kāśmīra Vaibhāṣikas is precisely the one handed over by Chapter Six of Essay Fifteen: ‘Atoms do not join, because they have no directional parts … only aggregated matter can join, because it has directional parts.’ The second refutation targets this rescue: ‘If atoms do not join, who joins in the aggregate?’ Since there is no aggregated matter apart from atoms, if no atoms join, who bears the joining of the aggregate? If the opponent retreats further and says aggregated matter does not join either, then they should not cite ‘having no directional parts’ as the reason.⁶

The third refutation is the dilemma of having or lacking parts: ‘If an atom has directional parts, / it cannot reasonably be one. / If it has none, shadow and obstruction should be absent; / the aggregate is not different, so both are absent.’ If there are directional parts, the six directions differ; how can it be one? If there are none, how is there a shadow when the sun first rises, and how do things obstruct one another? The commentary immediately closes with an overall verdict: ‘Different arrangements are established as atoms or as aggregates; neither is one real thing. What use is there in deliberating over atoms and aggregates?’⁶

The fourth refutation reaches a level Essay Fifteen did not. Having refuted atoms, the commentary does not stop. It turns to commonsense objects: are blue and other real colors apprehended by the eye one or many? Many has the same faults as before. One brings four faults together: ‘If one, there should be no successive walking, / nor simultaneous reached and unreached places, / nor multiple things with gaps between them; / and subtle things would be difficult to see.’ If the great earth is one thing, a single step should reach every place, leaving no reason for gradual walking. One thing at one time should not differ as reached and unreached. If a place is only one, how can it contain many elephants and horses with gaps between them? Tiny things such as small water insects, occupying the same place as coarse things, should have equal size.⁶

The significance of this refutation is that its target moves up from the smallest material dharma to everyday objects. Chapter Six of Essay Fifteen examined the successive provisions added by the Sarvāstivādins to preserve the atom. After finishing with atoms, the Twenty Verses asks another question: even without discussing atoms, the ‘single whole expanse of blue’ in your hands cannot stand either.

Comparison with Chapter Six of Essay Fifteen. That chapter ended with an instruction: the target of refutation is established here, but the refutations are not developed; two are left to Essay Twenty. This chapter is their place of development, with three points of comparison.

First, the two refutations target combination, not the atom itself. Essay Fifteen already identified this reading, and the source here fully supports it. The second refutation asks, ‘Who joins in the aggregate?’ The third concludes, ‘Or established as an aggregate; neither is one real thing.’ What is broken is the atom’s status as a minimal entity. Discourse about granularity is unharmed, as Chapter Nine of Essay Eighteen has already ruled.

Second, the techniques differ. Essay Fifteen observed the Sarvāstivādins’ self-proliferation of provisions supplementing provisions: every added provision requires another to fill the gap it leaves. The Twenty Verses strikes directly at the bottom with the dilemma of directional parts. It does not wait for provisions to accumulate; the atom’s spatiality itself supplies the reductio. One counts from outside how many patches have been added; the other points out from within that the baseboard being patched never existed.

Third, the extra step in the Twenty Verses—refuting the real unity of blue and other colors—has no corresponding position in Essay Fifteen’s domain, because the Sarvāstivādin inventory of real existents never included ‘a single whole expanse of blue.’ This step targets common sense and marks one divide between consciousness-only and Madhyamaka at the conventional level: here Madhyamaka preserves, while consciousness-only continues refuting. The difference deserves recording; Chapter Seven’s dispute over levels is foreshadowed here.

Seven epistemological objections. After the refutation of external objects, the opponent turns to cognition. The commentary replies point by point.

Two of these need separate entries.

‘Through mutual predominating power, two consciousnesses become determined’ is the formal answer to the problem of the shared character of experience and the mechanism-name for ‘shared karma’ in the first section’s four replies. Consciousnesses in different continuities serve as predominance conditions for each other; each one’s determination is brought about by differences in the other. The stability of a public world thus need not rely on external objects; mutual constraint among continuities carries it.

The answer concerning knowledge of other minds is a self-limitation. Vasubandhu could easily have said that consciousness-only makes complete knowledge of other minds possible. Instead, he admits that such knowledge ‘knows its object untruly,’ because both kinds of knowledge are covered by ignorance, both have false appearances resembling external objects, and neither has cut off the dual apprehension of subject and object. A system willing to admit that its knowing is untrue precisely where boasting would be easiest displays the same rigor as Chapter Three’s eight qualities of perfuming, which exclude buddhahood from the perfumer’s role.

The final verse of the Twenty Verses likewise closes with a modest acknowledgment of its limits: ‘According to my own ability, / I have briefly established the meaning of consciousness-only. / Its every aspect, hard to conceive, / is the Buddha’s domain.’⁷

An examination in the form of the theorem. Two readings of the thesis of consciousness-only and no external objects coexist.

Read as an overall assertion at level E3, that in reality only consciousness exists, it itself becomes a D3-type proposition and enters the scope of application under Essay Eighteen’s rules. Read as the general program of conventional mechanisms, without establishing a further E2 guarantor outside consciousness, it runs alongside the theorem without conflict.

First, following Chapter Three’s method of levels, count what the arguments deliver. All this chapter’s arguments together deliver two things. On the replying side, the four and seven objections are answered point by point: the shared character of experience and regularity function as usual without an external object as guarantor. This establishes ‘it need not exist.’ On the refuting side, the first three refutations defeat the three forms of existence on the list—one, many, and combination or aggregation—and the fourth extends the target to commonsense objects. This establishes ‘these forms of existence you have supplied cannot stand.’ Added together, the two still do not reach the ‘absence’ claimed in the thesis’s name. Dispensability cannot prove existence or nonexistence, as Chapter Three already charged; defeating the forms on the list defeats only the list. Measured by what the arguments actually deliver, ‘refuting external objects,’ read as an affirmative ontological judgment, is an overstatement. The arguments support only the exclusionary half.

Now consider where Vasubandhu’s own wording stops. At the establishment of the thesis, it is ‘“Only” excludes external objects without rejecting associated factors’: exclusion without affirmative establishment. In the section on hidden intent, ‘this very consciousness-only nature, as grasped by another consciousness, is also absent in its underlying reality’: consciousness-only nature itself is on the list of what may not be grasped. The same section also rejects absence in every respect: ‘without denying existence in every respect.’ These three self-limitations shrink the thesis to precisely the size its arguments can support. The text is safe because it signs only the exclusionary half; no signature for the overstated half can be found in its wording. The closing verse’s modesty agrees: ‘According to my own ability, I have briefly established the meaning of consciousness-only.’ ‘Briefly established,’ not ‘proved.’ This chapter’s verdict must therefore be written in two lines. As a text, the Twenty Verses places itself on the line between exclusion and preservation: it refutes the listed E3 forms and retains the mechanisms of level E2; even their collective name may not be elevated into an E3 item. As a school’s banner, the four Chinese characters 唯识无境, ‘consciousness-only and no external objects,’ say one step more than the arguments. That extra step is the entry point for strong readings in reception history. Chapter Eight will summarize the verdict on the two readings.

The section refuting atoms closes according to Chapter Nine of Essay Eighteen: only the E3 status of the smallest material dharma is broken. Discourse about granularity is unharmed; a minimal unit remains available as a legitimate item at level E2. The section on blue and other real colors requires a separate entry: its refutation lands on commonsense objects, out of step with Madhyamaka’s preservation at the conventional level. This case is filed with Chapter Seven’s dispute over levels.

For future treatment. The next step on this route is Dignāga’s Examination of the Object-Condition. It screens external and internal objects against the two requirements for an object-condition—bearing its own appearance and being able to produce consciousness—and is the most important continuation after the Twenty Verses’ refutation of atoms. The work can be read in Xuanzang’s translation (T1624). This chapter leaves it for future discussion alongside the three refutations of atoms.

References¶