Chapter 3: Universals and Particulars
The particular is apprehended, and only non-conceptually; the universal is grasped, and only conceptually. The first is a real entity and the second is not, and Sakya Paṇḍita treats “universal”, “isolate”, “non-entity” and “conventional truth” as having one meaning. The chapter’s polemic is against Khedrup Je’s distinction between a real universal-phenomenon pervading all its instances and an unreal universal-image, and it traces Tibetan realism about universals back to Ngok Loden Sherab’s seventeen years in Kashmir and, through him, to Chapa Chökyi Sengé.
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
The Way Cognition Knows Its Object
Four parts: (1) how universal and particular are cognised; (2) how appearance and exclusion are cognised; (3) how the expressed and the expresser are cognised; (4) how connection and contradiction are cognised.
1. The Way Universal and Particular Are Cognised
Two parts: (a) general statement on object and subject; (b) analysing the difference in cognising universal and particular.
a. General Statement on Object and Subject
Apprehending the particular is non-conceptual; Grasping the universal is conceptual. Of these two, the particular is a real entity; The universal is not established as a real entity.
The verse fixes the pairing of object with subject. A particular is apprehended, and only non-conceptually — “grasping” is a conceptual word, so it cannot be used here. Non-conceptual cognition cannot arise from itself: without the particular pillar or sound there is no eye- or ear-cognition. A universal is grasped, and only conceptually; conceptual thought takes its object by its own power, from latent dispositions, so whether an external vase exists makes no difference to the vase-universal in the mind.
The particular is a real entity. In pramāṇa “substance,” “matter,” “particular,” and “ultimate truth” have one meaning, as the Pramāṇavārttika also explains. The universal is not: “universal,” “isolate,” “non-entity,” “fictitious phenomenon,” and “conventional truth” likewise have one meaning — a barren woman’s son, a rabbit’s horns, a non-vase.
[Gelug] Khedrup Je and others distinguish the universal-phenomenon (tongchö), held to be real and pervading all gold and silver vases, from the universal-image (tongtsen), held unreal, and say the seven treatises refute only the latter. Sakya Paṇḍita and Mipham Rinpoche both reject this; Mipham gives seven or eight separate refutations of a real universal-phenomenon in his Great Commentary on the Pramāṇavārttika.
Source of the error. Ngok Loden Sherab studied seventeen years in Kashmir under masters learned in both Buddhist and non-Buddhist pramāṇa, and non-Buddhist realism about the universal entered his works; through him it passed to Chapa Chökyi Sengé and later masters. Sakya Paṇḍita’s criticism concerns only the doctrine — Ngok Lotsāwa’s standing as translator (of the Pramāṇālaṃkāra and much else), as founder of the Tibetan teaching-and-debate tradition of pramāṇa, and as teacher of vast assemblies is not in question.
Substance and isolate, universal and particular, Appearance and exclusion, conceptual or not — Other masters explain these in their own ways; I follow the [Indian] treatises in my exposition.
The early-pramāṇa masters variously place these categories in the mind, in mere construction, or in external objects, and disagree among themselves on whether isolate and substance are one or wholly separate substances. No single position prevails and none is unbreakable, so Sakya Paṇḍita declines to follow them and follows Dignāga and Dharmakīrti instead. Their allocation is firm: universal and particular belong to the object; conceptual and non-conceptual to the subject; exclusion and appearance to the manner of taking the object. Non-conceptual cognition takes particulars by way of appearance; conceptual cognition takes universals by way of exclusion. Hold this and the keys of pramāṇa open; lose it and appearance is perpetually confused with exclusion, universal with particular.
Inference does not apprehend a real entity; Hence [your view that] it does is unreasonable. Because it operates by exclusion, the wise hold That inference is established by means of isolates.
[Early-pramāṇa school] Their account: “substance” is the aggregation of many isolates on one thing — impermanence, being-produced, conditioned-phenomenon, matter, and so on gathered like the gills of a mushroom, or (as reported) like sesame seeds stuck on butter; “isolate” is any one of those scattered phenomena within the aggregate. Crucially, they hold these isolates really exist in the thing’s nature. They further posit a “substantial-phenomenon” (one on which directly contradictory phenomena cannot aggregate — permanent and impermanent) and an “isolate-phenomenon” (one on which contradictories cannot aggregate on a single isolate — implicative and non-implicative negation).
Sakya Paṇḍita refutes from several angles. First, their substance-and-isolate is just the non-Buddhist whole-with-parts renamed — one “whole” pervading all vases, one body on every limb — which the Pramāṇavārttika refutes at length. Second, the definitions are circular: substance is known through isolates, isolate is known as part of substance, so neither characteristic can ever be grasped. Third, “isolate-phenomenon” and “substantial-phenomenon” add nothing: the isolate-phenomenon just is the isolate, the substantial-phenomenon just is the substance. On our own account the pillar is the substance and is real; “not permanent” on it is impermanence, “not non-produced” is producedness — these are isolates, one substance with the pillar, divided out only by conceptual thought. The prayer-wheel example: it is not a vase, so “non-vase” can be imputed on it; not a camera, so “non-camera”; and since the world holds countless non-prayer-wheel things, countless isolates can be imputed. Were they real they would encrust the object like physical accretions — absurd.
The consequence the verse draws: on the opponent’s view the isolates of impermanence and producedness are real, hence particulars, hence real entities — so in “the pillar is impermanent, because it is produced,” inference would take a particular as its object. Worse, if producedness and impermanence were each their own substance, producedness could not establish impermanence at all, since different substances give no purchase. In fact they are one entity in the thing’s nature, differently known by conceptual thought, which is exactly why the argument lands on someone who knows the one and not the other.
Distinguish what inference fixes upon from what it operates on: the mind fixes on the particulars of fire and smoke on the mountain, but the negation and proof are carried out in conceptual thought by exclusion, never on the substance. On the particular, fire’s colour and heat are non-different from fire’s nature; nothing there can be negated or proven. “Produced” excludes non-produced and establishes produced, excludes non-impermanent and establishes impermanent — all within thought. Hence: substance is established, isolate is not; inference cannot grasp a real object; its object must be a universal or an exclusion. Because isolate and universal lack particular nature, conceptual thought can freely set up proof and refutation through them — and convention runs smoothly as a result.
b. Analysing the Difference in Cognising Universal and Particular
Three parts: (i) definition; (ii) classification; (iii) ascertaining the meaning.
i. Definition
That which excludes phenomena of other kinds is the universal; That which further excludes phenomena of its own kind is the particular.
The universal: the exclusion-cognition takes many things differing in time, aspect, and place, grasps them as one, and excludes everything of a different kind. Vases of every direction, time, and colour are grasped as “vase” while yaks, pillars and cameras are excluded; what remains is the universal-phenomenon. Likewise “human” — exclude non-humans, then disregard direction, skin colour, time and region, and gather the rest as one.
The particular: after excluding the other kind, one further excludes phenomena within one’s own kind. “Easterner” excludes all non-humans, then all non-Eastern humans.
The formula: before the exclusion-cognition, an imputed phenomenon possessing two isolates is the particular; one possessing a single isolate is the universal.
Objection. Granted the universal is imputed — but the particular is established as a thing, so how can it be imputed? Reply: both are imputed. “Particular” here does not name any specific person; it remains divisible. Han Chinese are a particular under “human,” yet a universal again with respect to Northeasterners and Southerners. So the difference between universal and particular is only one isolate versus two; in essence both are imputed, both objects of conceptual thought, neither an object of the senses. The person I see directly with my eyes is an object of direct perception — but that is not the “particular” under analysis here.
Why analyse this? Because some non-Buddhists and early-pramāṇa masters hold both universal and particular to be real, and others hold the particular alone to be real. The Seven Treatises, the Self-Commentary, and Mipham’s Great Commentary refute both.
ii. Classification
Every phenomenon admits two aspects: the particular-nature of the thing itself, and the universal-or-particular set up before conceptual thought. From the side of the thing’s own nature, neither obtains. “Pillar” is a universal when taken as covering pillars of every direction, and a particular within the whole range of the knowable — the same term either way, depending on the analysis; but on the pillar itself there is no universal and no particular. (Analogy: a worker asked whether he was really a king or a servant, since he was treated as both. Neither is on his nature — king with respect to his subordinates, servant with respect to another.)
Each of universal and particular has Two divisions: distinct-substance and successive. The distinct-substance particular is a different substance; The successive particular merely excludes being one substance.
Four items result: distinct-substance universal and particular, successive universal and particular.
Distinct-substance. The various aspects of one kind existing at one time. Within “tree,” sandalwood, agarwood, cypress and pine are distinct-substance particulars — sandalwood’s nature is not agarwood’s, and they co-exist; the “tree” connected to them is the distinct-substance universal. Likewise Easterners and Westerners as particulars under the universal “human.”
Successive. Set up on a continuum. Yesterday’s me and today’s me are not different substances — were they, they would be two people; yet they are not one entity either, or no difference would obtain and permanence would follow, my continuum ceasing to be momentarily impermanent. So this is “exclusion-of-one-substance” different-substance.
Certain Svātantrika masters use the converse term for the two truths, “exclusion-of-different-substance”: the two truths are not utterly non-different (else seeing the conventional would be seeing the ultimate), yet no ultimate exists apart from the conventional. Genuine different-substance and exclusion-of-one-substance different-substance are distinct relations, and many worldly phenomena have the latter.
These two categories exhaust the field: every universal and particular is either simultaneous or sequential within a continuum. Some masters note the fourfold division is not in the Seven Treatises but is Dharmottara’s (Tarwa Jönle) analysis. The setup follows Sautrāntika, which holds the present real and past and future unreal — so yesterday’s pillar and today’s pillar can be neither one substance (real and unreal as one) nor genuinely different: from the side of the universal “pillar” they are an exclusion-of-different-substance universal, from the side of particulars exclusion-of-one-substance particulars.
iii. Ascertaining the Meaning
Three parts: (1) refuting other positions; (2) establishing one’s own; (3) removing objections.
1) Refuting Others’ Positions
a) Refuting Distinct-Substance
(i) Stating the Opponents’ View
[Some assert:] Universal and particular are distinct substances.
[Vaiśeṣika] Among their six categories, universal and particular are different substances: each individual vase is a particular, and the universal “vase” really exists on every one. If both are real, they must be different substances.
(ii) Refuting That View
This is refuted by non-perception of what would be perceptible if distinct.
If the universal really existed apart from the particulars it would be perceptible — yet it cannot be seen, heard, or grasped. Apart from gold vases, silver vases, and the vases of the four directions, the single pervading “vase” is nowhere; examine the constituent atoms of a gold vase and no trace of it is found. It exists as a concept pervading all vases, and as nothing more.
(Note on the reason: “non-perception of what would be perceptible” does not concern things the eye could never see, such as demons on the vase.)
Parallel cases: in mindfulness of the body, no body is found apart from the limbs; investigating the “I” by the Ratnāvalī and the Clarifying the Jewel, clothing, limbs, organs and consciousness are each not me, and no self is found — no different from a barren woman’s son. So too “vase.”
b) Refuting One-Substance
Three parts: (i) one universal identical with many particulars; (ii) many universals identical with many particulars; (iii) a universal of similarity.
(i) Refuting One Universal as Identical with Many Particulars
(1) Stating the Opponents’ View
[Some say:] Universal and particular are one substance.
[Sāṃkhya] All phenomena are subsumed under twenty-five principles; the twenty-three apart from puruṣa and prakṛti are manifestations of prakṛti, so phenomena and prakṛti are one substance and the universal pervades all particulars — related as fire and its heat. One universal, many particulars, the same universal-essence on each: the blue-universal on blue cloth, mirror, and eye alike.
(2) Refuting That View
(a) Non-Perception of What Would Be Perceptible
Even were it one substance, it would [have to be] perceptible — yet it is not seen.
If a real universal existed on the particulars in a one-substance relation it should be perceptible; apart from the particulars not the slightest trace is found. Whether asserted as distinct-substance (Vaiśeṣika) or one-substance (Sāṃkhya), the same reason disposes of it.
(b) Refutation by Examination
If contradictory particulars — differing in place, time, and form — Were all linked to a single universal, Their arising and ceasing would all become one; Otherwise, one substance with two parts would contradict itself.
If one universal pervades vases of every direction, time, colour and material, then all of them must arise and cease in the same instant, since universal and particular are one. Deny it and a single substance holds “ceasing and not-ceasing” at once — self-contradictory.
The mechanism spelled out: the Shanghai vase is linked to the universal, the universal to the Tianjin vase; destroy the Shanghai vase and the universal must go, and with it every vase linked to it — a triangular link across all times and places. Likewise, if the universal “human” were real, one man’s death would kill every man, woman and intersex person alive. Gorampa presses it as a dilemma: when a particular ceases, does the universal cease? If not, universal and particular are not one substance as you claim; if so, all other particulars, being non-different from it, cease too.
Subsuming vases of every material and time under “vase” as a concept is fine; the consequences follow only if the universal really exists in the object. Dharmakīrti’s tradition escapes them because the universal is held to be in the mind and, on analysis, a non-entity — so whether or not it pervades the particulars costs nothing, and the naming remains highly useful: “vases exist” covers every kind, “vases do not exist” negates every one.
The opponents’ root error is not understanding exclusion (expounded fully in chapter four). One must know when to distinguish the thing’s actual nature from one’s own thought and when to combine them. A caution: pushed far enough, no conventional phenomenon is established at all — not only under Madhyamaka ultimate analysis but under pramāṇa analysis on the conventional level. Conventions rest on someone naming a thing and everyone growing used to the name; they can be analysed only up to a point, beyond which they evaporate.
(c) Drawing Out Absurd Consequences
If universal and particular are one substance, How then could you refute the [Vaiśeṣika] whole-with-parts? The senses would also become conceptual, And all contradictory phenomena would become one substance.
Three faults, charged against the Sāṃkhyas and equally against those early-pramāṇa masters who hold the universal real without saying so outright. (Mipham’s analysis in the Great Commentary on the Pramāṇavārttika, his Logic and other works accords with this chapter and with the Sakya position, and his refutations of the early school and the non-Buddhists run closely parallel.)
First fault — the whole-with-parts becomes irrefutable. The Vaiśeṣikas hold a real “whole” pervading all parts: the body on every limb. Madhyamaka refutes it — if the whole body were on every limb, moving one limb would move all four, uncovering the face would uncover everything, dyeing one part would dye all. But if you hold one real universal pervading all particulars, you have said the same thing in a different word; refute their “whole” and your “universal” falls with it, and if you will not concede your own error you cannot press theirs. Note that the charge only bites against Buddhists: a Sāṃkhya would simply reply that he never refuted the whole-with-parts and accepts it. So the target here is the early-pramāṇa school — who cannot want this result, since Dharmakīrti refutes the whole-with-parts at length in the Pramāṇavārttika.
Second fault — the senses become conceptual. The particular is granted to be a particular-nature seen by eye-cognition. If the universal exists on every particular and is non-different from it, the eye should see the universal and the ear hear it, making it an object of direct perception. But the universal is the object of conceptual thought; making it the eye’s object turns eye-cognition itself into conceptual thought, which no one in pramāṇa will accept. Gorampa’s rebuke: “You who are intoxicated by the poison of bad views, do not babble.”
Third fault — contradictories collapse into one. If the universal is on every particular, then light and dark, white and black, men and women all become one. White and black are both colours; if the universal “colour” is one with white and one with black, white and black are one — and the universal cannot pervade men but not women without holding two contradictory parts. It follows that every colour in the world is one with black, and we should see nothing but blackness. Similarly, perceiving one pillar we should perceive all pillars, since the universal is connected to every particular — and a phenomenon both appearing and not appearing to direct perception is impossible.
The reasoning used here is “is-equally-pervaded” reasoning — “if it is this, it is also that” (the vase is impermanent and is also produced; white and black are not so related). On the opponents’ view every phenomenon would become is-equally-pervaded.
The universal does not really exist — but it exists in convention. “Human” is a general designation with no corresponding particular-nature; the non-Buddhists mistake a name pervading all humans for a real thing. This is why Dignāga and Dharmakīrti are called the two eyes of the world, and why Mipham, in the Lamp Illuminating Definitive Meaning, says that setting up worldly conventions requires their pramāṇa. Its reasons are never “because we Buddhists say so”; every claim about seeing, hearing, sensation and cognition is backed scripturally and rationally. Its ultimate purpose, as Dharmakīrti states in the Pramāṇavārttika, is to support realisation of the selflessness of persons: seeing that all conventions are false, one still selects, speaks and acts, but ceases to grasp them tightly.
(ii) Refuting Many Universals as Identical with Many Particulars
(1) Stating the Opponents’ View
[If you say:] for each individual particular There is a corresponding universal — many in number —
Some will not grant that one universal pervades all particulars, and hold instead that each particular carries its own universal, peculiar to it: the gold vase its own “vase,” the silver and copper vases theirs. Universals are then as numerous as particulars.
(2) Refuting That View
Then the defining mark [of universal] is not established, And all reasoning of negation and proof is destroyed.
First fault. The universal was defined as an imputed phenomenon possessing one isolate — excluding other kinds but not its own kind. A universal belonging to one vase alone possesses two isolates as well as one, so the definition cannot be set up.
Second fault. If the universal is merely imputed, the position is Dharmakīrti’s and is already accepted; the fault attaches only to a real universal on each particular. Pramāṇa convention runs: establishing the particular establishes the universal, refuting the universal refutes the particular (“men are before me, so humans exist”; “no sandalwood here, because there are no trees”). On the opponent’s view, “trees exist, because sandalwood exists” fails — the tree-universal linked to sandalwood may exist without the one linked to agarwood. Worldly analogy: a county with one head allows “the county-head is not here”; a county with many heads leaves the others unaccounted for.
The practical damage is to speech itself. “There is no vase here” would negate only the gold vase’s universal, leaving the silver vase’s open; “no humans here” would leave the hearer wondering whether Southerners might still be present. “There is no water there” — “perhaps vase-water is gone but ravine-water remains.” Speaker and listener can no longer communicate, and negation and proof in convention collapse. By contrast Dharmakīrti’s imputed universal negates every vase of every time, place and material in a few words.
(iii) Refuting a Universal of Similarity
(1) Refuting Similarity in External Objects
(a) Stating the Opponents’ View
[It is reported some hold that] phenomena similar in defining mark form one universal, Which is one substance with the particulars.
[Early-pramāṇa school] Granting that neither one universal for all particulars nor many universals for many particulars will work, they identify the universal with similarity: humans all share the mark of knowing language and meaning, trees all share branches and leaves, so a single similar-universal connects the particulars. The error is taking similarity itself for the universal, with a real universal on each different particular.
(b) Refuting That View
Similarity is joined by conceptual thought; A conceptually-construed phenomenon does not exist in external objects. If similarity existed in external objects, Then on seeing one, an unseen thing would also appear similar.
Similarity is imputed by mind; nothing real answers to it in the object. [Objection] Mr Li and Mr Wang have the same face, clothes, tie, gait and speech — surely that is similarity. Reply: that is mental linking only. Mental imputation comes in two sorts — matching (mind imputes the pillar as impermanent, and it is) and non-matching (mind imputes two things as the same when they are not); similarity is the second.
The consequence: were similarity a real quality in the objects, then meeting Mr Wang without ever having seen Mr Li, I should already cognise “Wang is very similar to Li,” since Wang’s nature would contain the quality “similar-to-Li,” present in plain sight. (A merely indeterminate glimpse might be excused on other grounds, but not this.) Plainly no such judgement ever arises: having seen one and not the other, I cannot judge them similar.
Nor do the two men’s clothes and ties truly match — the dust-particles on one cannot match those on the other, and the special qualities of one phenomenon cannot migrate into another, that being the natural law of phenomena. Calling two things alike is linking two existing phenomena by habit and saying so conventionally.
(2) Refuting Similarity in the Mind
The decisive point: a universal is one, whereas “similar” requires at least two. “I am similar to me” is something no one would say. The universal “human” exists as one thing over men and women, Easterners and Westerners.
[Objection] Surely conceptual thought may grasp two things as similar and impute a universal on the shared defining mark — this looks close to your own view. Reply: it still fails on the same count.
[Objection] If similarity does not exist, why does Dharmakīrti say “X is similar to the moon, to space,” and expound similar-class and dissimilar-class examples? Reply: as conventional setup. He is not so dim as to confuse the conventional word with similarity as a real essence.
Similarity cannot apply to a single real entity.
Grasping a single phenomenon as similar is unreasonable; similarity needs two.
What is not one does not bear the term “universal.”
The universal in appearance is a single phenomenon: gold, silver and copper vases are distinct, but what pervades them is one “vase.” Only one universal-concept ever surfaces in the mind at a time; two cannot arise together.
If a single universal does not appear in the mind, Mere grasping of similarity cannot serve as a universal.
Every language-user has the ingrained habit of a single universal: vases from any factory are “vase,” yaks of any colour are yaks, and “bring me a yak” is enough. Without the universal-concept one could only say “bring something similar to a yak” — and the hearer would wonder whether an Indian cow or an elephant were meant (cow and yak having different defining marks in India). Or “boil something similar to water” — milk? pus? The function of the universal is lost.
[Objection] But a “similar universal” can be established, and would then serve for selection. Sakya Paṇḍita’s answer:
Partial similarity belongs to all things; Complete similarity belongs to nothing —
Partial similarity is universal: yaks and humans agree in being living, conditioned, worldly, knowable. Complete similarity holds nowhere, not even for twins — in the womb one lies left and one right, one cries while the other is silent, one inhales while the other exhales, and shape, size and position differ. (Watching a pair of twins closely at a meal, one could at last see one nose slightly higher, one face plumper, one complexion a shade lighter.) Nothing is wholly identical in time, place and form. So “similarity” as the universal is either shared by everything or by nothing.
[Your view] also clearly contradicts the truths Spoken by the King of Reasoning.
The “King of Reasoning” is Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, the rightful kings in settling worldly convention. A similarity-universal openly contradicts their account of universal and particular, which their own works refute. As their followers we accept neither one real universal pervading all particulars, nor many universals for many particulars, nor a single similarity-universal.
The universal is therefore a non-entity, not an object of direct perception but of conceptual thought — and indispensable in conventional judgement. Without it the world would be a uniform sea admitting no selection: humans could be called yaks and yaks vases. “Everyone gather here at three this afternoon” works, and no yaks arrive, because a conventional universal is shared and known.
2) Establishing One’s Own Position
The refutations so far: universal and particular are not two substances, not one substance, not one universal pervading all particulars, not many universals on many particulars, and not a universal of similarity. Buddhists following Dignāga and Dharmakīrti hold the universal to be a universal-image arising in the mental continuum, with no particular-nature. Dharmakīrti’s lines of reasoning against a real universal are counted as eight by Gorampa in his Commentary on the Pramāṇayuktanidhi and as seven by Mipham in his Great Commentary on the Pramāṇavārttika. “Own position” here means the position of the whole Buddhist pramāṇa tradition, not of Sakya or Nyingma in particular.
The nature of “exclusion of what is not it” Is established with respect to all real entities; This is the universal of exclusion (apoha), Mistaken for the particular when used in proof and refutation.
“Exclusion of what is not it” — to establish “vase,” all non-vases are excluded by the power of the universal. “Established with respect to all real entities” — the universal, having excluded the rest, is established on each individual entity, but only by way of function; “vase” is set up wholly before conceptual thought and the exclusion-cognition. That imputed phenomenon is the universal-image of exclusion.
Fourfold universal, with its matching particulars:
- Meaning-universal — the object’s image (colour, shape) appearing in thought or imagination. Its meaning-particulars: gold, silver, copper vases within that image.
- Name-universal — the name surfacing in the mind when “vase” is spoken; a matter of sound, with no form appearing. Its name-particulars: “gold vase,” “silver vase.”
- Kind-universal — e.g. “matter,” covering colour, sound, smell, taste, touch. Those categories are its kind-particulars.
- Aggregate-universal — the vase as the totality of lip, base and belly. Its aggregate-particulars: those parts, the atoms, colour, shape.
The universal is an exclusion in the mind, an aspect of conceptual thought, an image-object it grasps; on the actual nature it does not exist. It is an aggregate appearing before consciousness after unlike phenomena are excluded — some taken as one from similarity of defining mark (branches and leaves, hence “tree”), some from similarity of function (sandalwood-fire and agarwood-fire both burn, hence “fire”).
A concept has great function. “Today there is no electricity” negates the recorder’s, the radio’s and the lights’ electricity in one stroke; “no people in this classroom” excludes people of every time, place and form. On a per-particular real universal, neither would work.
How can a non-entity function? Because we mistake it for a particular-nature and operate on the mistake — the verse’s “mistaken for the particular when used in proof and refutation.” Were the universal actually the particular-nature, no proof or refutation could touch it: saying “the fire is not here” would remove the fire, and saying “fire” would send fire from one’s mouth. Ask a physicist or philosopher whether “fire” in their speech means fire’s nature or its universal; if the nature, the speaker’s mouth would burn. When I say “vase” I express the universal of sound and my mind grasps the meaning-universal; I fix upon the vase’s particular-nature, but no particular-nature arises in my mind. The listener likewise. Neither has seen or transmitted the particular — we communicate fuzzily within the universal-image. Does this count as valid cognition? It does. So valid cognition itself operates on a basis of error: the genuine particular has never been spoken and never been thought, and from beginningless time we have turned habituated universal-images in the mind while believing we spoke of the thing.
The range of the valid. Mipham, in the Great Commentary, sets validity within a range: for ordinary persons with unimpaired senses, seeing and hearing are valid — real things are seen, and this is direct perception. Analyse object and subject by their momentary nature and neither stands, but that analysis is not required here. Denying karma, cause and effect, and past and future lives is non-valid because it harms valid cognition; affirming them is valid and matches experience. Ultimately even cause and effect are delusion; provisionally they hold. So one must not cross the boundary of the valid in analysis — asking whether the vase is made of partless atoms, or whether a photograph is also a vase. What attains its object in conventional terms is valid: mind judges existence and the object exists, judges non-existence and it does not.
[Yogācāra query] Sarvāstivāda and Sautrāntika accept external objects; how can a particular-nature exist externally on the mind-only view? Mipham answers that although on the strict Yogācāra view no real external object exists, objects appearing through firmly habituated dispositions do exist conventionally — the water’s particular-nature is conventionally there when you look for water. On this both sides agree, so Yogācāra is not vulnerable to the charge.
3) Removing Objections
[Objection:] If there is no universal in external objects, And exclusion is a superimposed non-entity, Then though established [in mind], it has no link with the object, And so all conventions are destroyed.
[Objection] If the universal has no particular-nature, then though set up before the exclusion-mind it has no relation to external objects, and inference and convention alike break down. Three consequences:
First — the self-nature reason fails. Pramāṇa runs “establishing the particular establishes the universal”: in “the vase is impermanent, because it is produced,” producedness is the particular and impermanence the universal, one nature and one substance, and the easier-grasped producedness yields the harder-grasped impermanence. If the universal does not exist, the particular cannot establish it — as one could not establish a barren woman’s son by way of the pillar.
Second — the non-perception-of-the-pervader reason fails. “No sandalwood on the platform, because there are no trees” works by finding no pervader-universal “tree.” If the universal-image is a non-entity, “tree” is a barren woman’s son and the inference becomes “there is no sandalwood before me, because the barren woman’s son does not exist.”
Third — speech fails. “Pour water into my vase,” “pour me hot water in this cup” — if the universal is a non-entity unlinked to the world, no repetition of the words could get the listener to act on the actual cup or coffee.
The particular of the external object and the exclusion [in mind] Are mistakenly grasped as one in apprehending the object; One thereby attains the very defining mark of the thing — This is valid cognition, and so is wholly reasonable.
[Reply] No universal exists externally, but exclusion — beings’ beginningless habit — makes us grasp the universal-image and the external particular as one, and on that mistake we apprehend the object. Fetching water, I think of water; what is in mind is the universal-image, but I take it for the actual water, go, and get real water. Sending someone else: my words are universal-image-water, the universal-image surfaces in his mind too, both of us mistake it for actual water, and actual water is obtained. In speech universal-image and particular can be separated; in selection they are mistakenly grasped as one, and no one asks “the hot water in your mind, or the thermos in the room?”
“Obtaining,” per the Commentary on the Pramāṇayuktanidhi, is when consciousness determines existence and the object externally exists, or determines non-existence and externally there is none — not necessarily physically holding the thing. On the negating side: I say “there is no one here,” the listener knows it, and indeed there is no one — that too is obtaining the particular.
Strictly, grasping particular and universal as one is error even in convention; but for ordinary beings it cannot be refuted. Mipham’s criterion again: when the ordinary person’s thought determines existence and the object exists, or non-existence and it does not, that is valid, and within its range not even ultimate reasoning refutes it. Even deluded appearances — dream-appearances, two moons seen by day — are valid from the side of consciousness’s own appearance, though non-valid from the side of the unreal external object.
The standard is the verdict of common karmic dispositions. It is not the arhat’s (countless microbes on a droplet), nor the noble being’s meditative equipoise (all as the dharmadhātu’s luminous nature), nor the impaired eye’s (a white conch seen as yellow). Without such a standard, either everything becomes valid or nothing does. The base of valid cognition is ignorance: beings intoxicated by ignorance’s wine see a hazy phantasm and yet communicate within it, as two drunken people communicate quite well. We see neither ultimate reality nor even conventional truth — this pillar arises and ceases moment by moment, but no ordinary mind perceives that directly; say so to ordinary people and they think you mad. Before a noble being, equally, we could not communicate about the pillar’s luminous appearance.
Concluding Verse
The Owl School (Vaiśeṣika) asserts a distinct-substance universal; The Sāṃkhyas assert it as one substance; The Tibetan early-pramāṇa masters follow them; The tradition of the wise asserts exclusion (apoha).
Owl School — the Vaiśeṣikas, so named in the Madhyamakālaṃkāra, hold universal and particular to be wholly distinct substances; refuted above by non-perception of what would be perceptible. Many ordinary people think similarly: “vase” and gold-vase cannot be one substance, “human” and “man” must be different, or men and women would be one. On our own view no such consequence arises: in consciousness the thing’s substance and the mental universal-image are distinct, but not as different substances in the opponents’ sense. In speaking we separate them; in apprehending we mistakenly grasp them as one — the chief mode of conventional selection and the supreme key of pramāṇa.
The Sāṃkhyas — universal and particular as one substance, the twenty-three knowables and prakṛti of one taste.
The Tibetan early-pramāṇa masters follow them — Chapa Chökyi Sengé and others. Gorampa’s Commentary on the Pramāṇayuktanidhi explains the charge: the early school does not explicitly assert the universal as a real entity, but does accept that the universal stands in a same-substance relation with real entities, which agrees substantially with Sāṃkhya and makes them followers of it.
Two claims heard about this text are wrong: that Sakya Paṇḍita’s view is uniquely his own (it expounds Dignāga and Dharmakīrti), and that the Pramāṇayuktanidhi is the only pramāṇa treatise in Tibetan Buddhism (there are many, including numerous commentaries on the Seven Treatises).
The tradition of the wise asserts exclusion — Dignāga, Dharmakīrti, and Sakya Paṇḍita. The universal is exclusion; within exclusion, the phenomenon possessing two isolates is the particular. “Vase” as one isolate is the universal-image, as two isolates the particular — both objects of conceptual thought; but “vase” sometimes names a specific gold vase now seen, which is the particular-nature. The term shifts with range and context; only the object identified differs.
Exclusion is the heart and eyes of pramāṇa (chapter four expounds it in full). With it, what came before — cognition and object, universal and particular — becomes clear, and what follows — connection and contradiction, perception, inference for oneself and for others — becomes easy. Its keys: in speaking, universal-image and particular-nature are wholly separate, several things sometimes taken as one and excluded, sometimes one thing divided and excluded; in apprehending, the two are mistakenly grasped as one. Understand this and one knows what one says when speaking, what one thinks when thinking, and what one sees when seeing.
End of Chapter Three: Examining Universals and Particulars
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