The Pervasive Object

The table of contents for the whole practice section. The four objects are: (1) vyāpī (pervasive — meta-level), (2) carita-viśodhana (temperament-matched practices), (3) kauśalya (skill objects), (4) kleśa-viśodhana (defilement-purifying — the laukika path's grossness/calmness comparison).

These four are not four different objects but four aspects of how any meditation-object functions. Whatever the specific practice — unattractiveness, lovingkindness, breath, dependent origination — it involves all four: an image-with-construction (when investigating), an image-without-construction (when stabilizing), the full extent of the substance, and the consummation.

The catalogue enumerates every meditation practice in the Śrāvakabhūmi: the five carita-viśodhana practices, the five kauśalya practices, the laukika-mārga (lower grossness / upper calmness), and the four noble truths. All are jñeya-vastu — substances-to-be-known.

The root reads uparibhūmīnāṁ sātatyaṁ ('continuity of the upper planes'), but the local system expects the gross/calm contrast: lower planes as audārika, upper planes as śānta. The Revata passage below explicitly has rūpāṇāṁ śāntatve at 13.2 and ārūpya-śāntatāyām at 13.3. Translation therefore gives 'calmness' while leaving the Sanskrit JSON unchanged.

na punar anyat taj-jātīyaṁ dravyam api tv adhimokṣa-anubhavaḥ — 'not, however, as a thing of that very kind, but rather as a resolve-experience.' The central Yogācāra claim: the meditator does not engage with an actual exterior thing, but with a mental image — an adhimokṣa-anubhava (resolve-experience) produced by attention grounded in the concentrated plane.

jñeya-vastubhāvaṁ-sabhāgaṁ pratibimbam — the image is 'conformable' (sabhāga) to the substance-to-be-known, not merely similar in a loose descriptive sense. This aligns the image terminology with the sabhāga usage at sbh3.0:2.25.

The nine-fold mental abiding (treated in detail at [sbh3.1](sbh3.1.html)) is invoked here as the procedural mechanism by which nirvikalpa-pratibimba is stabilized. The nine stages are the staged stabilization of the contemplative image.

The local Sanskrit is not a formal compound pratibimba-pratibimba. It says tac ca pratibimbaṁ pratibimbam ity ucyate — 'and that image is called an image.' The point is terminological rather than morphological: once stabilized without investigation, the contemplative image is treated simply as pratibimba, an image in its own right.

yāvad-bhāvikatā / yathāvad-bhāvikatā — 'as-far-as-it-goes-ness' / 'as-it-actually-is-ness.' The full reach of contemplative engagement has two halves: the scope of the substance (how far it extends) and its nature (how it actually is).

The root has tasṛbhir yuktibhiḥ ('by three reasonings'), but the next line lists four: dependence, cause-and-effect, proof-establishing, and nature-of-things. Translation leaves the number implicit at 7.9 and lets the explicit fourfold list at 7.11 govern.

The four yukti (reasonings) — apekṣā-yukti (dependence-reasoning: by what does an effect depend on its cause), kārya-kāraṇa-yukti (cause-and-effect reasoning: what cause yields what effect), upapatti-sādhana-yukti (proof-establishing reasoning: by means of valid cognition), and dharmatā-yukti (nature-of-things reasoning: that things are just so by their own nature) — are the canonical Yogācāra epistemological fourfold. Same list and same definitions in [Saṃdhinirmocana](https://www.84000.co/translation/toh106) X.7 and Asaṅga's Abhidharmasamuccaya. The four together exhaust how yathāvad-bhāvikatā (as-it-is-ness) is investigated: causally, dependence-wise, by proof, and by appeal to the nature of things itself (which terminates the regress of reasoning). The chapter's use here is not merely epistemological scaffolding but a claim that meditative penetration of any jñeya-vastu must finally be checked against all four kinds of reasoning to count as vastu-paryantatā.

āśraya-parivṛtti — 'transformation of the support' or 'fundamental turning of the substrate.' One of the most important technical terms in Yogācāra. It names the structural change in the practitioner's psychophysical basis that occurs when meditative practice fully matures. Not a state-attainment; a change in the substrate that produces states.

The result: the practitioner transcends the image (pratibimbam atikramya) and reaches direct, non-conceptual knowing-and-seeing (nirvikalpaṁ pratyakṣaṁ jñāna-darśanam) in the very substance-to-be-known. The image was a vehicle; once it has done its work, it is transcended.

The root reads bāhyālambanam ('external object'), but the chapter heading, the opening category, 9.6, 19.6, and 19.8 all require vyāpī-/vyāpy-ālambana ('pervasive object'). Translation marks the repair as conjectural/corrupt rather than silently normalizing the source.

The closing canonical anchor: a dialogue with Revata in which the Buddha is asked the same question Asanga has been answering theoretically. The dialogue (framed as canonical via yathoktaṁ bhagavatā, evam anuśrūyate) has no clearly identifiable extant Pali parallel; possible sources include a Sarvāstivāda āgama surviving only in Chinese or Tibetan, or a tradition-internal fragment.

The temperament-matching of carita-viśodhana practices, given here as the Buddha's own teaching. The five practices and five temperaments are not Asanga's innovation but canonical: rāga → aśubhā, dveṣa → maitrī, moha → idaṁ-pratyayatā, māna → dhātu-prabheda, vitarka → ānāpāna-smṛti. The conduct labels are kept in compound form: lust-conduct, hatred-conduct, delusion-conduct, conceit-conduct, and applied-thought-conduct.

tat-pratirūpakam asyotpadyate — 'a representation of it arises.' The Buddha's canonical statement of the pratibimba doctrine, in his own teaching to Revata. The practitioner does not directly see the substance-to-be-known. Rather, a representation arises, an appearance, a mere knowing, a mere seeing, a mere remembered-mark.

āśraya-pariśuddhi — same as āśraya-parivṛtti in the kārya-pariniṣpatti passage. The four purifications (of support, of object, of mind, of knowing) constitute the result-state of mature practice.

kārya-pariniṣpatti ('consummation of the task') is the same defined term introduced at 8.5 and the seven-aspect yoga schema at sbh2.0. The parallel gāthā-commentary at 19.4 below renders the same phrase bhuṁkte prīti-sukhaṁ nirāmiṣam under kāya-pariniṣpatti ('consummation of the body') — these are two distinct aspects, not a copyist's slip, and Shukla's reading is preserved on each side.

āptāgama-viśuddha ('purified by trustworthy testimony') and yukti-patita ('consistent with reasoning') — both kinds of validation: canonically anchored and reasoned from first principles. This is the strongest possible epistemic standing in Buddhist scholastic logic.