Chapter 1: Examining Objects
An object is whatever a cognition knows — conceptual or non-conceptual, correct or erroneous — and nothing is an object apart from being cognition’s referent. The chapter’s work is the refutation of Chapa Chökyi Sengé and the early Tibetan logicians, who took the conceptual image and the non-existent appearance (hairs seen with a diseased eye, a double moon) to be substantially real apprehended objects existing outside consciousness. It also fixes the fourfold division of object — apprehended, intended, appearing, ascertained — that the rest of the treatise depends on.
Condensed from Khenpo Sodargye’s Chinese lecture transcripts on the Pramāṇayuktanidhi, and rendered into English. Root verses are given as the lectures give them; the prose beneath summarises the exposition. On the provenance and the limits of this rendering, see the series introduction.
Chapters: 1. Objects · 2. Cognition · 3. Universals and Particulars · 4. Proof and Exclusion · 5. Expressed and Expresser · 6. Connection · 7. Contradiction · 8. Definitions · 9. Perception · 10. Inference for Oneself · 11. Inference for Others
Determining the Knowable through Universals and Particulars
Three sections: (1) objects of knowledge; (2) the cognition that knows; (3) the manner in which cognition knows objects.
1. Objects of Knowledge
Two parts: (a) definition; (b) classification.
Framing. Pramāṇa derives from the sūtras, not from later scholasticism: the Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra teaches the four reasonings (efficacy, dependency, establishment, nature of phenomena); the Daśabhūmika Sūtra teaches inference by signs (waterbirds → water, smoke → fire, outer signs → a bodhisattva’s realisation); other passages teach perception (“perceive form through the eye-consciousness and the mental consciousness”) and yogic perception. Mipham Rinpoche’s Extensive Commentary on the Pramāṇavārttika gathers these scriptural proofs. Non-Buddhist inference systems (Akṣapāda, Kaṇabhuk) predate the Buddha and are not denied. Sakya Paṇḍita’s stated aim in the colophon is threefold: overturn non-Buddhist tenets, overturn provisional Śrāvaka positions, and correct Mahāyāna scholars who misread Dignāga and Dharmakīrti. Unlike Madhyamaka, pramāṇa works at the conventional level, like the Abhidharmakośa.
a. Definition
The definition of an object is: that which is known by cognition.
An object (viṣaya) is the referent of any cognition whatsoever — conceptual or non-conceptual, correct or erroneous. Nothing is an object apart from being cognition’s referent, so the definition is free of the three faults (contradiction, under-pervasion, over-pervasion) and is exhaustive.
b. Classification
Three parts: (i) refuting others’ positions; (ii) establishing one’s own; (iii) removing objections.
i. Refuting Others’ Positions
1) Stating the Opponent’s View
Suppose one claims that the conceptual image and non-existent appearance are both objects.
The opponents are the early Tibetan logicians (སྔ་རབས་པ་), notably Chapa Chökyi Sengé. They hold that the conceptual image (arthasāmānya) and non-existent appearance (asatpratibhāsa — hairs seen with an eye disease, a double moon) are substantially real apprehended objects with self-characteristics existing outside consciousness.
The four objects, needed to follow the debate: apprehended object (grāhyaviṣaya) — what cognition directly engages as bearing its own characteristic, divided by the five faculties or by form/sound/smell/taste/tangibles; intended object (adhyavasāyaviṣaya) — engaged indirectly by conceptual fixation, chiefly inference’s object; appearing object (pratibhāsaviṣaya) — whatever appears via a determinate or indeterminate image, correct or not (the concept “impermanent pillar”; a double moon from pressing the eyes); ascertained object (avadhāraṇaviṣaya) — an object that does not deceive the cogniser (hearing water and finding water), whether particular or universal.
2) Explaining the Refutation
a) The absurdity that the apprehending cognitions would not be erroneous
Then it would contradict the fact that the two cognitions grasping them are erroneous.
Sakya Paṇḍita’s consequence: if the double moon (object of eye-consciousness) and the conceptual image (object of mental consciousness) were fully real apprehended objects, then the cognitions grasping them could not be erroneous — a real object grounds a non-erroneous cognition, as a vase or pillar before us does. But both sides agree these cognitions are erroneous, so the premise fails.
“The object exists, yet like a rope apprehended as a snake, there is still error.”
The early logicians reply: object-existence and cognitive error are compatible. At dusk one sees a variegated rope and takes it for a snake; the rope genuinely lies there, yet confusing conditions make the eye-consciousness erroneous. Likewise their two objects could be real while the cognitions grasping them err.
Apprehending the variegated [rope] is not erroneous, for the object exists; it is because the [snake-] object does not exist that the snake-apprehension is mistaken.
Sakya Paṇḍita disassembles the analogy. It contains two cognitions, not one. Apprehending the variegated colours — object real, cognition correct; nobody disputes this. Apprehending a snake — there is no snake on the ground, so both object and cognition are wrong. The analogy therefore shows the opposite of what the opponent needs: error in the cognition tracks absence in the object. For the analogy to serve them, the snake would have to be a genuine apprehended object, which it is not.
b) The absurdity that the object should be visible to others
If the two kinds of appearing objects existed as entities separate from cognition, then others positioned to see them should also directly perceive them, like a vase.
Second consequence: real self-characterised entities standing outside cognition are publicly available. Anyone suitably placed should see one’s conceptual image and one’s double moon just as they see a vase.
“Though both are external objects, just as one does not see inside the body, the two erroneous appearances are always linked to oneself; therefore others cannot know them.”
The reply: real yet private. Internal organs belong to one’s own body and no one else sees them; the conceptual image (of a pillar) and the non-existent appearance (hairs, a double moon) are similarly bound to one’s own consciousness.
The interior of the body is not a visible object; therefore even oneself does not see it.
The analogy collapses on its own terms: one’s organs are not even one’s own visible object. The example describes something invisible to everybody, so it cannot explain something supposedly visible to exactly one person.
“Because they are always linked to oneself, those two are likewise not visible objects.”
The early logicians press the privacy claim: the vase-concept is inseparable from one’s own mental consciousness, the double moon from one’s own eye-consciousness; hence each is only its owner’s visible object. What follows targets the conceptual image chiefly, not the double moon.
Since they are linked solely to one’s own mind, even if one speaks of them, others will not understand.
Sakya Paṇḍita draws out the consequence: strictly private conceptual images would destroy language. When I say “bring me that vase,” my vase-image is tied to my mind and my listener’s to his, with no connection between them; repeating “vase” a thousand times could never raise the concept in his mind. In fact a shared concept does arise — a small-mouthed, large-bellied vessel for liquid — so the premise is false. The cost of the opponent’s position is the severing of every speaker–listener relation in the world.
“Each is linked to one’s own mind; therefore through speech others come to know them.”
The counter: the images are not unconnected but identical — each person carries a matching vase-concept linked to himself, so speech triggers recognition.
The conceptual images designated by the two persons are mutually distinct and cannot be combined.
Superficially plausible, but the two images are distinct entities: what I speak of has no connection to him, what he hears none to me. And “identical” cannot be established from within — judging two things similar requires a third party who observes both, as deciding that two friends have similar faces requires someone who sees both faces. No such third observer exists for two people’s private images.
“Before each person there exist two mental images that are identical; by fixating on their similarity as one entity, conventions are applied, so there is no contradiction.”
The opponents shift: the images match in form, people fixate on the matching pair as one entity, and on that basis conventions get applied — so communication is saved without contradiction.
What appears before oneself is one’s own object; what has never appeared is not one’s object. Therefore, how could apprehended objects that are distinct entities be grasped as one?
What appears before my mind is my object; what has only ever appeared before another’s mind is not. The two remain wholly distinct entities, and distinct apprehended objects cannot be grasped as one.
“Though in truth they are distinct entities, through error they are apprehended as a single object.”
The concession that ends the debate: the opponents grant that neither image migrates or merges — people simply mistakenly treat the distinct images as a common object.
Sakya Paṇḍita accepts the concession as his own conclusion. That is exactly the position he has argued: the conceptual image is not a real self-characterised object outside consciousness but a mistaken conceptual representation. It may be called an “object” from the angle of conceptual fixation, but it has no self-characteristic. The opponents have crossed over to his side.
Since grasping them as one is erroneous, it is established that they are not [real] apprehended objects.
Once unity is admitted to be an error, the conceptual image is admitted not to be a genuine apprehended object. Thesis established.
Interstitial verse (antarāśloka) — a summary verse inserted mid-composition to recapitulate:
When examined by reasoning, [these] are utterly non-existent, yet the majority still fixate on them as objects— like when one points with a fingertip, a fool mistakes this for seeing space.
Reasoning grounded in the nature of things (vastubalaprāpta), by inference and perception, finds no real conceptual image or non-existent appearance; yet most early Tibetan logicians go on asserting them. Numbers do not make a position sound — Einstein’s reply to the hundred scientists who published against relativity is offered as illustration: one correct refutation would suffice, so needing a hundred proves they had none. One Dharmakīrti outweighs a crowd. The verse’s own image: someone asks where space is, another points a finger, and the first, seeing blue sky and clouds, announces he now sees space. Space has no essence to see; claiming to see it is like claiming to see a barren woman’s son. The sūtras concur: “Some people believe they see space, but space can never be seen; all phenomena that are seen are likewise.”
ii. Establishing One’s Own Position
The object of valid cognition is solely the particular (svalakṣaṇa).
“Object of valid cognition” (prameya), “external object,” and “real entity” are synonyms in pramāṇa: whatever the instrument of valid cognition measures. The essence of an entity is its particular; its appearance is the universal (sāmānyalakṣaṇa). Only the particular, the self-characterised entity, is the true and ultimate prameya; nothing else counts as a real external object.
iii. Removing Objections
Two parts: (1) objections concerning erroneous cognitions having no object; (2) objections concerning the particular as apprehended object.
1) Removing objections concerning erroneous cognitions having no object
a) Removing the charge of contradicting the teaching of two objects of valid cognition
“This contradicts the acceptance of two objects.”
The objection cites authority: Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya and Dharmakīrti’s Pramāṇavārttika teach two prameya, universal and particular, hence two valid cognitions — perception for the particular, inference for the universal. Restricting the prameya to the particular contradicts both masters.
“Particular and universal” is said from the perspective of the mode of apprehension.
No contradiction: the two masters’ twofold division is stated from the mode of apprehension. Non-conceptual cognition apprehends only the particular; conceptual cognition apprehends the universal and never reaches the thing itself. Sakya Paṇḍita’s single prameya is stated from the ultimate perspective. Everyday experience matches: what we think of is a concept, what we actually obtain is the particular.
b) Removing the objection that non-existent appearances are equally objects of valid cognition
“Non-existent appearance is equally an object of valid cognition.”
If the conceptual image, though refuted as a real object, still counts as prameya, consistency seems to demand the same for non-existent appearance.
That lacks the necessity and capacity to serve as an object.
They are not on a par. Mistaking a universal for a particular and acting on it still delivers the apprehended object: smoke on a distant mountain yields fire when followed; the sound of water yields water. The universal, erroneous as a grasp, has instrumental efficacy. Non-existent appearance has neither necessity nor capacity — chasing a second moon obtains nothing.
The appearance of hairs and the like is cognition itself; the floating hairs are not established as real.
Hairs and double moons have no external existence at all. They are erroneous manifestations of the eye-consciousness — cognition itself, with nothing real established outside it.
If one analyses whether that substantial entity exists or not, it becomes a universal.
Asking “did those hairs actually exist?” makes the hairs an object of conceptual thought, hence a universal, hence includable in conventional truth (saṃvṛtisatya). Viewed as cognition, the hairs are a self-characterised cognition and includable in ultimate truth (paramārthasatya). So no third category outside the two truths is needed.
c) Removing the objection of contradicting experience
“The two non-substantial phenomena are indirectly established through self-awareness, thus refuting your position.”
The early logicians appeal to experience: the universal and non-existent appearance are external objects, and since they are intimately bound to one’s cognition, self-awareness (svasaṃvedana) indirectly establishes them as existent.
The two erroneous cognitions have no external object; since they are experienced by self-awareness, they are cognition itself. Grasping what does not exist as existent — that is precisely error.
The appeal backfires. If self-awareness is what establishes them, they are inseparable from cognition, which concedes that no conceptual image or double moon exists apart from one’s own luminous cognition. Taking what cannot exist externally to be real is precisely the error under discussion.
d) Removing the charge that refutation by valid cognition is impossible
“If there is no object that is not a particular, it is contradictory for non-substantial things to be objects of valid cognition.”
If only particulars are prameya, then non-substantial things — emptiness, a barren woman’s son, rabbit horns — have no self-characterised essence and so could never be measured or discussed at all.
When establishing what is to be proved or refuted, there are both substantial and non-substantial bases; hence no contradiction.
Analysis of a non-substantial thing always rides on a substantial one. To ask whether an elephant exists, the elephant-concept must first arise, then be examined and affirmed; to establish a pillar’s absence, the pillar’s image must first arise, then its essence be examined and denied. “Non-pillar” is established in dependence on “pillar.” So the universal of a non-substantial thing can serve as prameya, while the non-substantial thing’s own essence offers nothing to measure. The prameya here is provisional, established from the angle of refuting the substantial thing.
2) Removing objections concerning the particular as apprehended object
a) Debate
Certain scholars declare: “The external apprehended object has been refuted by the wise, and the apprehended object of cognition is inadmissible here; therefore even a single object of valid cognition is untenable.”
These scholars attack the thesis “the prameya is solely the particular” with a dilemma: neither accepting nor rejecting external objects yields a self-characterised object.
Horn one — the schools that accept external objects, Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika, were refuted long ago by Yogācāra masters such as Vasubandhu and Dharmakīrti. Vasubandhu’s analysis of six atoms surrounding a central one: a real external object requires truly established partless atoms (paramāṇu). Ask whether the central atom has spatial parts. If yes, it is not partless. If no, aggregating partless atoms can never build a coarse object — all of Mount Meru would collapse into a single point.
Horn two — accepting only a cognition-internal apprehended object fails too. Yogācāra grants no apprehended object built from partless atoms, but pramāṇa is framed to accept external objects (Dharmakīrti says so), so mind-only is inadmissible as pramāṇa’s working premise.
b) Response
i) General analysis of the tenets of the schools
The various schools each proclaim: “It is nature,” “Īśvara,” “Primal matter,” “Atoms,” “Consciousness,” or “Dependent origination” — these are the assertions of the various systems.
A survey of the competing worldviews. Cārvāka: everything arises naturally. Maheśvara: everything is Īśvara’s creation. Sāṃkhya: twenty-five categories, phenomena arising when the three guṇas (sattva, rajas, tamas) lose equilibrium. Vaiśeṣika and the Vaibhāṣika/Sautrāntika Buddhists: atoms underlie all form. Yogācāra: mind-only. Madhyamaka: dependent origination — ultimately empty, conventionally appearing like illusions.
ii) The position determined by the Ācārya
Determining the Sautrāntika position
Refuting the Vaibhāṣika
It is said: “Because one does not see when obstructed, it is not cognition but the supporting faculty that sees.”
The Vaibhāṣika argument: cognition is immaterial and so unobstructable; if cognition were the seer we could see through walls and mountains. Since obstruction blocks sight, the physical faculty (indriya) must be what sees.
Being insentient, it cannot be the seer.
The faculty is insentient matter, and insentient matter has no capacity to apprehend anything.
Between simultaneous things there is no relation.
A second refutation, by relation. Only two relations exist: identity (tādātmya) and causality (tadutpatti). A faculty and its simultaneous object are distinct entities, so not identical; and being concurrent, neither can cause the other. Lacking any relation they are as unconnected as the eastern and western mountains, and the unconnected cannot stand as seer and seen.
Refuting the similar Snow Land school
The Snow Land school says: “Object and cognition, being simultaneous, constitute the apprehended and apprehender.”
Some early Tibetan logicians drop the claim that the faculty sees but keep simultaneity of object and cognition. Close enough to the Vaibhāṣika to be refuted alongside it.
Being simultaneous, there is no relation; cognition arising without a cause is truly contradictory.
Same relation argument, plus a further cost: if the object cognition depends on is merely concurrent with it, cognition has no cause at all.
“The preceding moment’s object is the cause; the simultaneous object is the apprehended.”
The opponents split the roles: the prior moment’s object causes the cognition, the concurrent object is what gets apprehended.
Since cognition is established as having arisen from the prior object, the simultaneous object is not needed.
The split makes the concurrent object idle. Object, faculty, and mental engagement in the preceding moment already produce cognition in the next; a concurrent object has no function, no necessity, no role. The practical upshot: seeing a pillar, one should not think “this present pillar is my concurrent object” — that is the early logicians’ error. The object that generated this cognition ceased in the preceding moment.
Establishing one’s own position
That which is produced by object, faculty, and mental engagement — that is cognition.
The Sautrāntika account: three conditions gather in the first moment — objective condition (ālambanapratyaya, the external object), immediately preceding condition (samanantarapratyaya, mental engagement), dominant condition (adhipatipratyaya, the sense faculty) — and cognition arises in the second. This is how apprehension is conventionally established.
Although food and the like are causes for producing a child, the child resembles the parents’ form; likewise with the object.
Why does cognition take the object’s form rather than the faculty’s or mental engagement’s? Simply the natural order of causation. An embryo depends on the mother’s food, on time, on body temperature, yet the child resembles the parents, not the food; a seedling resembles its seed, not the fertiliser.
Therefore, the object has two results, and cognition too is accepted as having two aspects.
Every entity yields two results: a continuation of its own kind, and a cognition bearing its form. Matching this, cognition has two aspects: the outward-directed apprehension of the object (viṣayākāra) and self-awareness (svasaṃvedana), the inward-directed aspect. All object-apprehension is ultimately subsumed within self-awareness — without self-awareness functioning, no apprehension occurs.
Determining the Yogācāra position
Refuting the Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika
Being free from unity and multiplicity, external objects do not exist; their aspects also do not exist.
Both schools hold partless atoms to survive ultimate analysis. But a partless atom is neither truly one nor truly many: “many” is an accumulation of “ones,” so if “one” fails, “many” fails with it. Without the atom, the external objects built on it fall, and so do the aspects (ākāra) they are supposed to impart to cognition. The six-atoms-round-one analysis again: parts in the central atom destroy partlessness; no parts, and any aggregate collapses to a single point, Mount Meru included.
Note on scope: this is the ekānekaviyogahetu, but deployed here from the Yogācāra standpoint against partless atoms — not as the Madhyamaka reasoning that establishes ultimate emptiness. It does not turn on the mind Yogācāra accepts.
Refuting the worldly convention
If one relies on worldly conventional agreement, this contradicts what is established by valid cognition.
Some early logicians proposed settling conventions Candrakīrti’s Prāsaṅgika way: accept what worldly people accept, without detailed analysis. Sakya Paṇḍita rejects this for pramāṇa, whose whole method is precise analysis that worldly people have never performed; deferring to convention would undermine perception, inference, proof, and refutation alike.
Mipham Rinpoche (commentary on the Madhyamakālaṃkāra) reconciles the two: when Prāsaṅgikas say they do not analyse conventions, they mean that analysis is secondary to the meditative equipoise establishing the ultimate — not that conventions are never analysed. The Madhyamakāvatāra’s detailed exposition, from form through omniscience, shows as much.
Establishing the Yogācāra position
Established by the reasoning of luminous awareness and co-apprehension: co-apprehension does not allow them to be different entities; if they were different entities, the reason would be inadmissible— like the appearance of two moons, the same as the blue-apprehending cognition. By excluding the other, the remaining alternative is negated.
The verse names the two reasonings that establish mind-only: the prakāśa reasoning (reasoning of luminous awareness) and the sahopalambhaniyama reasoning (invariable co-apprehension). Together they prove that all external objects are manifestations of mind and that no truly existent object stands outside that manifestation.
The prakāśa reasoning: the knowable external object (subject) is one entity with the cognition apprehending it (predicate), because it is merely a manifestation of luminous awareness and bears the defining characteristic of cognition (reason), like fire and its heat (example). Plainly: the red pillar I see is one entity with the eye-consciousness seeing it, because the appearing object has mind’s characteristic, as fire and its heat are inseparable. The key point: the only way anyone establishes that an object exists is that it appears before cognition; whatever appears before my cognition is inseparable from my luminous awareness, and Yogācāra accepts no pillar outside luminous awareness. Whatever bears an entity’s defining characteristic must be classified as that entity — dewlap and hump make a cow; luminous clarity makes cognition.
The sahopalambhaniyama reasoning: the seen external object (subject) is one entity with the seeing cognition, or at least not a different entity (predicate), because the two are invariably co-apprehended (reason), like a double moon (example). Whenever cognition is present the object appears; whenever cognition is absent it does not — as with a double moon, where each exists only alongside the other.
- Positive pervasion (anvayavyāpti): whatever is seen is one entity with the cognition seeing it, because they are invariably co-apprehended, as with the double moon, which is inseparable from and invariably concurrent with its seeing cognition.
- Counter-pervasion (vyatirekavyāpti): whatever is not one entity with its cognition could exist at a different time from it. “By excluding the other, the remaining alternative is negated” — anything genuinely other (parabhāva) than cognition should be findable at some other time, but nothing of the sort is ever found. The supposed “other” is a harmful reason (bādhakahetu): nothing is both co-apprehended and genuinely other.
Mipham Rinpoche notes that the prakāśa reasoning approaches Dzogchen’s direct pointing-out of mind’s nature, while the sahopalambhaniyama reasoning establishes the non-existence of external objects by inference.
Removing objections
Removing the objection of equivalence with atoms
“The mental continuum is like the whole, and moments are like the parts of atoms— since each has the nature of three instants, it is free from unity and multiplicity.”
The Mādhyamika turns Yogācāra’s own weapon on it: mental continuum plays the role of the coarse whole and partless moments the role of atoms, so the ekānekaviyoga reasoning refutes moments as it refuted atoms. Any present moment has a portion bordering the past and a portion bordering the future — three parts, not partless. Being three rather than one, it loses unity, and with unity gone multiplicity goes too.
Since it has three-instant nature, a single instant cannot be established; if a single instant cannot be established, the three-fold nature has evidently been lost.
The Yogācāra reply is a verbal riposte: if your “three” destroys our “one,” your “three” dies with it, since three is built from one. The commentary is candid that this works only on the verbal level — in truth Madhyamaka’s ekānekaviyoga reasoning is, in Mipham Rinpoche’s image, fire meeting dry grass, reducing everything to emptiness. Sakya Paṇḍita gives the reply while provisionally standing inside the Yogācāra position.
Because coarse particles simultaneously surround the central one, the central atom becomes partite; but since the three times do not arise simultaneously, the present moment is partless.
The substantive reply: atoms and moments are disanalogous. Atoms coexist spatially, so six peripheral atoms genuinely surround a central one at once, forcing spatial parts on it. The three times never coexist — the past has ceased, the future has not arisen, the present is just this instant — so the parts-analysis has nothing to grip. Provisionally tenable at the conventional level: the partless moment is time’s smallest unit, and pushed further it dissolves into emptiness, just as the partless atom, divided further, dissolves into the dharmadhātu.
Examining whether there are aspects or not — removing what is unreasonable
The objection: if neither the Satyākāravāda (True Aspectarians) nor the Alīkākāravāda (False Aspectarians) accepts external objects, valid and invalid cognition become indistinguishable. With everything mind, first moon and second moon are equally unreal externally, white conch and yellow conch equally false — correct and incorrect, one and two, all distinctions collapse.
What appears as external objects is cognition itself; this appearance does not exist externally.
Sakya Paṇḍita answers from within the Yogācāra: mountains, rivers, white conches, yellow conches — not a particle of substance exists apart from one’s own mind; all of it is cognition’s own nature.
Through stable and unstable habitual imprints, the real and the illusory are established.
The distinction is preserved by the stability of habitual imprints (vāsanā) on the foundational consciousness (ālayavijñāna), not by external referents. A white conch: thousands of people with stable imprints see it as white, enduringly. A person with jaundice, on an unstable imprint, sees yellow temporarily. As humans we see water and drink it, on a stable human imprint; when that imprint is exhausted and hungry-ghost imprints ripen, the same rivers appear as pus and blood. What most beings perceive through stable, enduring imprints counts conventionally as correct; what is perceived through temporary, unstable imprints counts as incorrect. Hence one moon seen by an unimpaired eye is valid, two moons seen by a distorted eye invalid.
Summary verse
So long as external objects are accepted, during that time the cause is called the apprehended object. If the knowable is subsumed within the mind, the distinction between object and subject cannot be established.
The chapter’s conclusion, stated as a graded sequence. While external objects are accepted (the Sautrāntika position), the cause that imparts its aspect to cognition is called the apprehended object and does exist. Once the knowable is subsumed within one’s own cognition (the Yogācāra position), external objects fall away as deluded manifestations of mind, and with them the object/subject (viṣaya/viṣayin) distinction. Ranked by definitiveness: Sautrāntika, external objects exist — the less definitive; Yogācāra, no external objects but mind exists — provisionally definitive; ultimate Madhyamaka, object and mind alike merge into the dharmadhātu free of elaboration — fully definitive.
Pramāṇayuktanidhi, Chapter One: Examining Objects — summary concluded.