Chapter 4: Examining Proof and Exclusion
Chapters 1 to 3 treated the object, the cognition that knows it, and the pairing of universal with particular. This chapter treats neither object nor subject alone but the manner in which cognition takes its object: non-conceptual cognition apprehends by appearance, naming-conception grasps by exclusion, and each divides into mistaken and unmistaken, making four. Sakya Paṇḍita posits both modes solely from the side of the apprehending cognition, and admits no exclusion residing in the external object.
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 Appearance and Exclusion Are Cognised
Two parts: (1) general statement on the mode of apprehension; (2) determining their particular natures.
1. General Statement on the Mode of Apprehension
Non-conceptual cognition apprehends by appearance; Naming-conceptual cognition grasps by exclusion. Each of these has two divisions — Mistaken and unmistaken — making four in all.
The chapter’s place in the structure: Chapter 1 treated the external object, Chapter 2 the cognition grasping it, Chapter 3 how cognition apprehends by way of universal and particular. Chapter 4 treats neither object nor subject alone but the manner in which the subject takes the object — appearance and exclusion, which Sakya Paṇḍita, following Dharmakīrti, posits solely from the side of the mode of apprehension.
Every non-conceptual cognition — sense-cognition or non-conceptual mental cognition — takes its object by appearance. Once the object has presented itself the cognition’s work is done; there is no negation, no establishment, no grasping at how the object is. Conception is wholly different: mistaken or accurate, it takes its object by excluding phenomena of a class other than its own. “Vase” picks out the vase by excluding non-vase. Exclusion is of two sorts, verbal and cognitive; Sakya Paṇḍita’s own school admits no exclusion residing in the external object.
Both modes divide into mistaken and unmistaken. Unmistaken non-conceptual: seeing a white conch as white; mistaken: the yellow conch, the second moon (further divisible into sense- and mental-cognitive error). Unmistaken conception: knowing the pillar impermanent, knowing karmic cause and effect, knowing a striped rope is not a snake. Mistaken conception: grasping sound as permanent, denying cause and effect, denying the Buddha’s qualities — classified further by the deluding factor (environment, time, form).
2. Determining Their Particular Natures
Two parts: appearance, and exclusion.
a. Appearance
Three parts: the real nature of the object; the way cognition apprehends; the accord between cognition and object.
i. The Real Nature of the Object
All the properties an object possesses Are one entity that cannot contain many; Many cannot reside on a single one, And on one thing there is no manifest-and-unmanifest part.
Sapphire has triangular shape, blue colour, momentary impermanence, being-produced. These are not many entities: shape cannot be pulled apart from colour, nor either from momentariness or producedness. From the side of the entity all properties are one; they become “many” only by conceptual division, as a vase carries the isolates red, wide-bellied, produced, momentary, conditioned — all imputed.
Nor can many distinct phenomena reside on one entity. The blue of sapphire, blue lotus, sky, and ocean is treated as one colour, but that single “blue” has no real entity; in the objects themselves these blues are different things. One configuration is not many, many not one.
Nor does one thing have a manifest and a non-manifest part: seeing sapphire, its impermanence, producedness, blueness and shape are all seen; before non-conceptual cognition there is no seen and unseen portion. (Cited earlier from the Madhyamakālaṃkāra-vṛtti.)
[Vaibhāṣika] Blue and impermanence are separate, blue belonging to the form-aggregate and impermanence being a non-associated formation in the formation-aggregate; the entities of the five aggregates are pulled apart. From Sautrāntika upwards, neither aggregates nor imputed isolates are pulled apart at the level of the entity, only in conception. (The worldly objection that a vase’s back is unseen misses the point: the back is another collection of subtle particles. “Phenomenon” in the treatises means what appears before cognition — colour, shape, impermanence, producedness alike.)
Why, then, do some know a thing is produced but not that it is impermanent? Because of special deluding causes, treated below.
ii. The Way Cognition Apprehends
Before any direct perception the object appears completely; A single entity cannot appear as different aspects; Distinct entities cannot appear as one; Apprehension by appearance is not sequential.
“Direct perception” here means genuine, not pseudo-perception. All features of the object present themselves exactly as they are: before eye-, ear-, nose- or mental direct perception, no case obtains where one part appears and another does not. A single entity cannot show different forms — if the object is blue the cognition shows blue; the mouth, belly and base of one vase cannot appear as many entities. Conversely, distinct entities cannot appear as one: the belly is innumerable particles, each eastern particle composed of finer ones, and all present themselves as they are — an eastern particle does not appear as a western, a white one as yellow.
This is why Mipham Rinpoche, in the Madhyamakālaṃkāra-vṛtti, posits conventional truth in accord with True-Aspectarian Mind-Only, and within it the school of “equal number of subjects and objects” as most reasonable: pramāṇa analysis shows the object’s features reflected exactly in the cognition. (Kuiji’s Great Commentary on Logic explains “directly perceiving” by fixed mind and dispersed mind; the fixed-mind account matches this, and the dispersed-mind account — object unclear until close at hand — is also found in the Pramāṇavārttika. Either is acceptable.)
Apprehension by appearance is not sequential. Seeing sapphire, its colour, shape, impermanence, producedness and conditionedness present themselves at once, like an image in a mirror; there is no first-colour-then-shape. In conception sequence is possible: one sees red clothes without certainty of the redness, recalling it only later, the shade and material perhaps never; one knows “impermanent” but not “produced,” or the colour but not the shape. The entity is single, but conceptual certainty about it can be partial.
iii. The Accord between Cognition and Object
Two parts: how they accord; establishing that direct perception lacks determination.
(a) How They Accord
By the force of however the object exists, The sense-cognition arises accordingly; Since without the object it definitely will not arise, Cognition and object do not mistake each other.
Apprehension proceeds by the force of the object’s own particular features; a sense-cognition bearing the same aspect arises in dependence on it. Without the object, eye- or ear-cognition could not arise — a “without-X-no-Y” relation, which is precisely why the two cannot mistake each other. Watching the ocean, the wave-shapes and colours present themselves exactly, as a vase’s form appears in a mirror.
All Buddhist schools from Sautrāntika upwards accept this: Sautrāntikas hold we see not the pillar’s particular but its aspect; Cittamātra and above hold the object’s aspect appears before the mind. This concerns genuine direct perception; pseudo- or mistaken perception (two moons, the landscape running backwards as one rides past) has deluding causes. Genuine conventional valid cognition must be accepted — fire’s heat known by body-cognition, the rose’s red by eye-cognition, coarse from fine sound by ear-cognition. Phenomena, though unreal, support valid cognition conventionally.
On the “equal number of subjects and objects” account, a fabric of a hundred differently coloured parts yields a hundred corresponding apprehending parts in the eye-cognition; were it otherwise — many colours but one cognition, or one colour but many cognitions — object and cognition would be mismatched.
(b) Establishing that Direct Perception Lacks Determination
Three parts: the actual reason; refuting the unreasonable response; conception does not apprehend the appearing object.
(i) The Actual Reason
Direct perception is precisely non-conceptual; Hence it requires no determinative function.
Direct perception does its work merely by the object’s presenting itself; it does not negate, establish or grasp. To the objection “if non-conceptual, how can it be valid cognition?” Dharmakīrti answers in the Nyāyabindu that direct perception is the cognition that first sees an uncommon object; Dignāga in the Pramāṇaviniścaya says grasping at one’s present happiness, or taking happiness to be not-suffering, is not direct perception. Valid cognition, direct or inferential, is simply cognition undeceived in its judgement of its object — the sense in which the Buddha is a pramāṇa-puruṣa.
[Early-pramāṇa school] Direct perception lacks conceptual determination but has non-conceptual determination. Reply: what would that be? If it means eye-cognition faithfully sees a form-entity, that is not determination but mere non-conceptual apprehension. If it means eye-cognition discriminates red from white, no such doctrine appears anywhere in the Seven Treatises. The view is groundless.
(ii) Refuting the Unreasonable Response
Two parts: how direct perception engages refutation and establishment; and that determination would contradict direct perception.
α. How Direct Perception Engages Refutation and Establishment
Objection. If direct perception has no conception, superimposition cannot be severed: seeing the pillar’s entity directly there is no taking-or-rejecting, no certainty of its presence or absence. A means of valid cognition must judge accurately; without conceptual judgement, how is it a means at all?
Direct perception is free of conceptual thought; It is established as a means of valid cognition by being unmistaken. By its own power or by another’s power, Refutation and establishment proceed by way of determination.
Reply: direct perception is set up as valid from the standpoint of being unmistaken about its object; the object’s undistorted presentation suffices, and validity does not require determination. Seeing the red pillar, sense-cognition produces no certainty “this is a red pillar,” yet all its features are presented, and that is enough. Dignāga’s Nyāyapraveśa: “Direct perception is non-conceptual.” Dharmakīrti added “non-erring” in the Nyāyabindu because some non-conceptual cognitions are mistaken (two moons, yellow conch); hence direct perception has two characteristics, non-conceptual and faithful to the object.
As for refutation and establishment: sometimes certainty arises spontaneously, with no deluding cause, and negation and proof proceed on that basis; sometimes another power must be relied on. Seeing red coral, certainty arises at once — “it is red” — and one acts on it: determination by direct perception’s own power. With the red pillar, its momentariness and producedness may not all be recognised, impermanence especially, blocked by an inner deluding cause (the latent disposition to grasp permanence) and an outer one (gross sense-cognition cannot detect momentary arising and ceasing). There the reasoning “since it is produced, it must be impermanent” — another power — brings the certainty. Either way certainty can be drawn out of direct perception, so the objection collapses. (Certainty by its own power is exemplified by post-judgement cognition among the non-valid cognitions.)
β. Determination Would Contradict Direct Perception
Three parts: that determining “blue” as an isolate is conceptual; how certainty severs superimposition; that this is the masters’ intent.
β.1 Determining Blue’s Isolate Is Conceptual
Determining the isolate “blue” is conceptual, Hence it is exclusion; By misidentification one obtains the particular as illuminated object; Looked at inwardly, it is accepted as self-aware valid cognition.
Objection. Recognising the pillar’s impermanence is clearly exclusion, since non-impermanence is excluded. But grasping the pillar as “blue” fits nowhere: it is conceptual, so not direct perception; it arises from no reasoning, so not inference; it eliminates no contrary, so apparently not exclusion; yet the object grasped is correct, so not non-valid cognition either.
Reply: the analysis is faulty. Direct perception has already occurred, taking the inseparable thing itself without dividing “this is blue, that is not.” On that basis the conception “this is a blue vase” arises — and it is exclusion, for in grasping “blue” one has already excluded yellow, white, green and red. One does not say to oneself “I am thinking blue, not white,” but every thought and word has the dual capacity to refute and establish, as the Pramāṇavārttika makes clear: saying “bring me the blue thing” needs no added “not yellow or black,” since establishing one phenomenon simultaneously excludes its contradictories.
Can such exclusion obtain the actual particular? Exclusion has no real object of its own and grasps only a universal; if it had a fixed object distinct from blue, saying or thinking “blue” would fetch something else. Since no other object exists for it, one takes the universal to be the particular and so obtains the illuminated object. The key word is “misidentify”: the misidentification of universal as particular is exactly what enables one to get the genuine object, whatever blue is found — fabric’s, ocean’s, sky’s.
Does this conception fall outside valid cognition? No. Outwardly, being conception unsupported by reasoning, it is not classed as a means of valid cognition; inwardly it is self-illuminating self-awareness, included in self-aware direct perception. Dignāga’s Pramāṇasamuccaya: “Conception too is accepted as self-awareness.” Even non-conforming conceptions — the floaters and second moons of Chapter 1 — are, on the side of cognition, inseparable from cognition’s own entity and so included in self-awareness, though on the side of the non-existent object they remain non-valid.
β.2 How Certainty Severs Superimposition
Know that whoever possesses certainty Severs superimposition by means of that very certainty.
[Early-pramāṇa school] Non-conceptual cognition has determination and so could sever superimposition. Sakya Paṇḍita’s school denies it: Dignāga and Dharmakīrti nowhere assign that role to direct perception (here rejected in passing rather than attacked directly).
Cognitions endowed with determination sever their contrary superimpositions, for certainty and superimposition are like light and darkness, incompatibles that cannot coexist in one continuum. With genuine certainty that past and future lives exist, that cause and effect are real, that the Three Jewels have blessing power, the contradictory doubts and wrong views are eliminated. Superimpositions, broadly the thirty-two listed in the Prajñāpāramitā, are conceiving the non-existent as existent or the existent as non-existent; certainty exhausts them. Once “this pillar is a blue thing” is determined, the doubt “is it perhaps yellow?” cannot stand; once impermanence is known by pramāṇa, “my lifespan is permanent” is finished.
β.3 This Is the Masters’ Intent
Both certainty and superimposition, As cognitions, apprehend by exclusion; The statement that these two are not direct perception Is the teaching of those who fully grasp reasoning.
“This is a pillar; this is impermanent” are determinate certainties; “this is not a pillar; the pillar is permanent and unproduced” are superimpositions. Both are conceptions, hence both grasp by exclusion — certainty excluding non-pillars, superimposition excluding the impermanent pillar and the vase. Neither is direct perception. The autocommentary states expressly that it is unreasonable to assert the isolate “blue” is seen by direct perception; that is one’s own conception.
[Early-pramāṇa school] Direct perception sees the isolate “blue” on the blue pillar, many real isolates inhering in one thing, so that seeing blue is seeing all of them by sense-cognition. Their error is failing to separate appearance from exclusion. Once separated, isolates cannot be seen by direct perception — otherwise one would see the isolate “blue” and not the isolate “impermanent,” with attendant absurdities. When Sakya Paṇḍita, before meeting the Kashmiri paṇḍita, found Tibetan masters disputing whether the isolate exists in the entity, the Kashmiri replied: “I do not know about a ‘blue isolate’; the pillar simply is blue — that is its entity.”
The Pramāṇavārttika confirms it: a determinate conception severs its contrary superimposition (the conception “the pillar is non-permanent” severs the superimposition that it is non-impermanent), and sound and word can sever superimposition too; but direct perception of an object’s single entity cannot, its work being only to illuminate exhaustively whatever presents itself. (Jamyang Lodrö Wangpo cites this passage.) Verbal-exclusion is ultimately included in cognitive-exclusion, since words alone effect no refutation or establishment.
(iii) Conception Does Not Apprehend the Appearing Object
Three parts: refutation and establishment would be simultaneous; all names of one object would be synonyms; distinguishing by isolates concedes exclusion.
α. If It Appeared, Refutation and Establishment Would Be Simultaneous
If naming-conceptual thought were to measure by appearance, Then refutation and establishment would have to be known simultaneously.
If conception and word apprehended the object’s features by appearance, all worldly “is” and “is not” would collapse into one. Thinking “vase” would bring every isolate — impermanence, producedness, colour, shape — before the mind at once; establishing “this is a vase” would already establish all its features, and establishing “this is not a vase” all the features of non-vase. Anyone able to say “vase” would thereby know everything about it, and the doubt “the vase is produced, but is it impermanent?” could arise in no one. Since all phenomena are impermanent and suffering, merely thinking “all phenomena” would realise all four characteristics of contaminated dharmas in one’s continuum. Plainly false — which is exactly why the natural-property reason “the vase is impermanent because produced” is needed for such people. (Otherwise saying “hell” would set all its features before one.)
So on the object’s side, “on one thing there is no manifest-and-unmanifest part”; on the subject’s side, “apprehension by appearance is not sequential.” Measurement is conception’s work, and language measures only approximately; neither operates by direct presentation.
β. All Names of One Object Would Be Synonyms
Even granting many names for one thing, They would in fact be mere synonyms with no real difference.
Conception applies many names to one object — “produced,” “impermanent” — each with its own force and function. On the opponent’s account these would be mere different names for the same thing with no actual distinction. In ordinary usage they are sharply distinguished: “pillar” calls up the whole shape, “produced” the artisan’s making, “impermanent” its eventual destruction by conditions; each has its own characteristic, function and name.
The fault: reasoning by subject, predicate and reason would be impossible. In “this vase is impermanent because it is produced,” vase is the subject of dispute, impermanent the thesis, produced the reason — three names distinguished from the isolate side, though one from the entity side. If conception measured by appearance the three would be inseparable and the inference would reduce to “vase is vase because vase,” precluding all reasoning. Yet natural-property reasons are not vacuous: for someone who, through a deluding cause, knows the vase is produced but not impermanent, the reasoning works, and the superimposition of permanence is severed. (Compare: the moon may be called “bright-light one”; if the two were simply one, no inference could be drawn from the name.)
γ. If Distinguished by Isolates, It Becomes Exclusion
If you distinguish by isolates, that is just exclusion; Once you have given them names as real entities, To call this “appearance” is mistaken.
The opponent may escape the synonym fault by saying “impermanent” and “produced” are distinguished by isolates — which concedes the point. If distinguished by isolates the cognition is exclusion; if exclusion, these are nothing beyond conception’s imputation; if not real, non-conceptual direct perception cannot see them. Anyone — early-pramāṇa or worldly — who claims non-conceptual cognition illuminates isolates is mistaken. Exclusion can divide isolates, treating one as many and many as one; that is its proper work. To make direct perception a kind of exclusion, or the reverse, is a category error.
b. Exclusion
Three parts: real exclusion; determining its nature; dispelling disputes.
i. Real Exclusion
Apprehending by negating that which is directly contradictory Is what is asserted to be the subject of exclusion.
The definition. Exclusion is conceptual, eliminates all contraries directly contradictory to itself, and on that basis generates certainty about the object: saying or thinking “vase,” all non-vases are excluded and vase is known. The definition covers all four kinds of exclusion (verbal and cognitive, real and unreal), does not over-extend to non-conceptual cognition, and is uncontradicted. The worry that verbal-exclusion is mere name and sound is met by its ultimate dependence on cognitive-exclusion.
(Other masters distinguish cognitive, external, and non-implicative exclusion. Sakya Paṇḍita’s school: every exclusion is set up on the side of conception, and there is no real exclusion in the external object.)
ii. Determining Its Nature
Two parts: positing; and detailed division.
(a) Positing
(i) General Statement
Because it is imputed, exclusion has an unreal object; By misidentification it apprehends as if it were a particular. With respect to the oneness or otherness of particulars, Exclusion’s modes of apprehension are four in all.
Exclusion is imputed by conception, with no real entity and no real object — like a reflection in a mirror, where no form-object exists but only the image. When “vase” appears in the mind all non-vases are excluded, yet exclusion has no fixed particular as object.
That it is imputed does not make it false: grasping “existent,” there is a meaning-universal taking the real; grasping “non-existent,” one taking the unreal. Holding “the pillar is impermanent,” conception’s “impermanent” is an imputed aspect, the genuine impermanence not present in it. Yet by misidentifying universal as particular one does in the end obtain the external particular — the pillar’s universal appears, one treats it as the particular, says “bring me the pillar,” and the function of selecting and rejecting is fulfilled.
Pramāṇavārttika, Chapter 1, gives three features of exclusion. (1) Fixation on the particular: though it has no real object, exclusion fixes on the particular it pursues, by misidentification. (2) No real object: had it one, it could fix only on that and could not range over vase, pillar, existent, non-existent alike. (3) Seed of direct perception: every exclusion is a seed planted by what was directly seen or heard. Mipham Rinpoche’s example in the Great Commentary: a desire-realm being who hears of the immeasurable palaces of the Thirty-Three, or of the gods’ nectar, generates a corresponding universal though he has seen neither, because he has seen palaces and tasted similar liquids here. Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok stressed these three as the key to exclusion.
In the entity there is no confusion — one is one, two is two. In conception there are four modes: grasping one as one; distinct as distinct; distinct as one; one as distinct. The first two are trivial; the last two are treated below.
(ii) Particular Statement
α. Distinct Grasped as One
Cause of superimposition.
[Their] function and defining characteristic are one.
Sentient beings habitually treat many as one, for two reasons. First, sameness of function: all fires — of the three times and four quarters, of sandalwood or common wood — share burning, so all are “fire”; all vehicles share carriage. Second, sameness of defining characteristic: all trees share having branches and leaves; all vases, gold or silver, of any origin, share being wide-bellied and small-mouthed.
A person of intelligence first imputes a name, others follow, and habit becomes tradition. The Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra: “If names were not posited, all the world would be in confusion; therefore the Buddha, by skilful means, posits the names of phenomena.” Names may be desire-driven, imputed at will (place-names), or cause-driven, imputed by reason (the train named for its function).
Mode of grasping.
By the power of habit they are mistakenly taken as one.
From beginningless time habit makes distinct things one. A yak treats every patch of grass as food by yak-habit; humans treat every fire as “fire.” Some names are self-imputed, some adopted from others (a foreign term kept and habituated, like “DVD” in Chinese). Psychologists isolating a group of children found they invented names for the things in their room and communicated by them — so the grasping rests on individual or collective habit.
[Objection:] If they are originally just as much distinct, The cognition that is their result being one in some cases and many in others is contradictory.
[Opponent] Things are equally distinct from one another, yet Easterners and Westerners are grasped as “human” while humans and yaks never are. Why the difference?
[Reply:] Just as with cognitions and medicines — Though distinct, there are such differences.
This is simply the natural law of things: distinct causes can produce one result, distinct causes distinct results. Attention, eye-faculty and object — distinct — produce one eye-cognition; fertiliser, field and seed one barley harvest. Conversely borneol and pomegranate are distinct medicines with distinct functions, one for wind, one for heat. The causes are equally distinct in both cases, yet the effects differ. (Jamyang Lodrö Wangpo’s commentary answers thus.) Alternatively: yak and horse are not grasped as one because their characteristics differ; gold and silver vases are, because function and characteristic are shared; vase and pillar are not, since neither is shared and the habit is absent.
Necessity.
Refutation and establishment of all distinct things Are accomplished at the same time and place.
The mode is needed because it gives exclusion the dual capacity to refute and establish at one time and place. Saying “in front there is no tree” negates sandalwood, cypress and pine together without enumeration; saying “in front there is a cypress” establishes the concept of tree as well. As Rongtön Paṇḍita explains, establishing “I have a tree in front” simultaneously excludes vase, prayer-wheel, person, yak, elephant, lion — a list no lifetime could exhaust. Without this grasping there would be no shared communication at all.
β. One Grasped as Distinct
Cause of superimposition.
In exclusion’s distinct domain, One entity can be divided into different isolates.
Though single in essence, before exclusion a thing divides into many. Sound: excluding “permanent” gives impermanent; excluding “non-produced” gives produced; excluding “non-sound” gives sound — one in the entity. These isolates are not established in the entity; they are imputations, in which the aspects differ though the impermanent sound just is the produced sound. One vase can be set out as vase, impermanent, produced, conditioned, blue, made-by-X, non-Buddha-image, non-microphone, and so on without limit; from the isolate side not one, from the entity side nothing but the vase.
Mode of grasping.
According to how words and conceptual thought apprehend, The external object is held as having distinct aspects.
The entity is single but words and conception divide it: the vase is spoken of as vase, impermanent, produced, blue, and conception holds it accordingly, with many universals appearing and the names distinguished — vase is not pillar, produced is not blue. Each aspect is then misidentified as having an object identical with itself: from the side of “blue” a blue object stands before conception, from the side of “produced” a produced one. (Verbal-exclusion is included in cognitive: words alone cannot exclude.)
Necessity.
For those who do not understand a single thing as one, We analyse it [into aspects] in order to make them know.
Because people fail to recognise that the isolates are one entity. Pillar and impermanence are one entity, yet someone may not realise the pillar is impermanent; setting up pillar as subject, impermanence as thesis, producedness as reason — three isolates — the reasoning conveys it. Without such division, only “the pillar is a pillar, because it is a pillar” could be said.
Many confuse entity and isolate, and so take what is partless as endlessly divisible: fire’s defining characteristic, then the characteristic’s characteristic, in regress; or a particle divided endlessly with the divisions supposed to lie on the object’s side. They lie only in conception. The Madhyamakālaṃkāra: “All phenomena that we and others assert, in suchness, are without any nature, because they are free of one and many — they are like reflections.” Without these two modes such reasoning is unavailable. (This also underpins the partless particles and partless cognitions of Chapters 1–2 and the treatment of definitions in Chapter 8.)
iii. Detailed Classification
Three parts: real classification; refuting exclusion in external objects; particular establishment.
(a) Real Classification
Based on grasping the existent and the non-existent, Exclusion has two divisions; By the further distinction of name and concept, Each of these two also divides into two.
From the side of establishing the thesis and excluding the rest, exclusion is real or unreal. Unreal exclusion is on the side of negation — “non-vase,” “no vase”; real exclusion is “this vase,” “there is a vase.” Each subdivides into verbal and cognitive, giving four: real verbal (saying “vase,” excluding non-vase); real cognitive (thinking it); unreal verbal (saying “barren woman’s son”); unreal cognitive (thinking it).
No genuine universal of a barren woman’s son can appear. As the Madhyamakālaṃkāra-vṛtti explains, the universal of “rabbit’s horn” arises because we have seen rabbits and yak-horns, so saying it produces the picture of a horned rabbit — details varying with what one has seen. Such universals appearing before the mind are unreal cognitive-exclusion; uttering them, unreal verbal-exclusion.
Verbal-exclusion depends throughout on cognitive-exclusion: to someone lacking the conceptual habit linking the sound to vases, the word “vase” excludes nothing — he hears sound only. Words qua sound have no power of exclusion; conception does the work.
(b) Refuting Exclusion in External Objects
(i) Actual Statement
Exclusion is a mode of cognitive apprehension; In insentient external objects there is no exclusion.
Exclusion is conception’s mode of apprehending the object’s universal — neither object nor subject, but the manner of taking the object. On insentient objects there is no real exclusion. (The term “external exclusion” may be used by imputation without contradiction.)
Sakya Paṇḍita’s school accepts two exclusions: cognitive-exclusion (the concept “vase” appearing when a vase is grasped) and non-implicative-negation exclusion (the absent isolate — that non-vase is not present on the vase). Both are modes of conceptual apprehension.
The chief target is external particular exclusion. [Early-pramāṇa school] Chakja-pa and others held that since the vase’s entity already excludes non-vase from itself — not pillar, not snow-mountain, not lion — the particular itself contains an exclusion.
Positions on the count: Śāntarakṣita in his Pramāṇa-tattva, with Kamalaśīla’s commentary, accepts three (non-implicative-negation, cognitive, particular), but as concepts, not real entities; Devendrabuddhi and Vimuktasena likewise three; Dharmottara two. In Tibet, Sakya Paṇḍita two; [Gelug] Khedrup Je three, distinguished as acted-upon (particular-exclusion), action (non-implicative-negation) and agent (cognitive, the principal one), and in his Removing Darkness from the Seven Treatises he calls the first two imputed. Gorampa, commenting on this text, also accepts three, taking cognitive-exclusion to be the entity of cognition itself rather than an apprehension-mode, and setting up particular-exclusion not as truly real but because without it the thing’s universal could not arise; on his account real exclusion has all three, while mistaken exclusion need not have the particular (grasping sound as permanent has the other two but no permanent particular sound). Mipham Rinpoche accepts two in the Gateway to Knowledge (particular and cognitive) and three in the Great Commentary, where he stipulates that particular-exclusion must be set up in conventional conception — a conventional concept only, so no contradiction with Sakya Paṇḍita.
Sanskrit apoha has an excluding side and an excluded side. From the excluded side, particular-exclusion is conventionally admissible: the particular vase is not other phenomena. This does not mean the entity has truly excluded other entities. Apart from cognition, no exclusion exists in the vase. The kind existing independently of cognition is rejected by all — Mipham, Khedrup Je, Gorampa alike. Were exclusion in the entity, appearance would be too, and as with the non-Buddhist confusion of universal and particular, entities could not be distinguished.
(ii) The Reason
Two consequences follow.
α. Exclusion Would Become Appearance
If object-exclusion were the particular itself, It would become an object of appearance, losing its status as exclusion.
If the particular contained an exclusion-entity not imputed by conception, exclusion and particular become non-different. But the particular is the object of non-conceptual direct perception — unmistaken, without manifest and non-manifest aspects, faithfully presented. So exclusion would lose its own defining characteristic and become an object of appearance, turning into a mode of non-conceptual apprehension; the conventions and distinctions of pramāṇa fall apart.
β. Appearance Too
Appearance, by parity, would also be present in the object; If you accept that, blind people would have to be extinct.
If exclusion lay in the particular, appearance would too, both being apprehension-modes; no principled reason distinguishes them. But appearance is neither the external object nor the non-conceptual cognition: it is the way non-conceptual cognition arises in dependence on the object, an eye-cognition bearing the object’s aspect arising through faculty, object and attention. If the particular itself contained that aspect-arising, colours could be seen without an eye-faculty — and since blindness is precisely the lack of a working eye-faculty, there would be no blind, deaf, or sensorily impaired people at all, and the eight points of leisure illustrating the rarity of human birth would not apply. (Khenpo Ngawang Chödrak gives this reasoning in detail.)
(c) Particular Establishment
(i) Real Verbal- and Cognitive-Exclusion Together
α. Defining Characteristic
Real exclusion eliminates the unreal.
Grasping a real entity, the inactive unreal is excluded: saying “vase,” all non-vase on the vase is excluded. (Not that non-vase things become unreal; the “non-vase” side on the vase is the unreal eliminated.) Its two kinds are cognitive (grasping the real entity’s universal) and verbal (saying “vase”), the verbal included in the cognitive since sounds cannot exclude of themselves.
β. Classification
By whether the object appears or not, [Real exclusion] divides into two types.
Manifest exclusion, where the particular has appeared, and concealed exclusion, where it has not.
Manifest exclusion
Determinative cognitions about whatever has its own characteristic appearing — However many — analyse it through name and concept; Hence exclusion comes to have an isolate as its object.
Direct perception sees the particular, and conception then analyses: white or black, blue or not, permanent or not — selection and rejection of the particular. (Post-direct-perception judgement, among the post-judgement cognitions treated earlier, matches this.) Two kinds: conceptual manifest exclusion (seeing the pillar’s particular, then conceiving “it is impermanent”) and verbal manifest exclusion (saying aloud “the pillar I just saw is impermanent”). Either way it judges the isolate, dividing one entity into many sides. Whether or not one has seen the particular, conception never knows it: what stands before “my pillar”-thinking is exclusion’s universal.
Concealed exclusion
When its own characteristic does not appear, Whether reliant on a reason or not, It is the domain of name and concept; Therefore [such] determination is also exclusion.
The sole difference from manifest exclusion is whether direct perception of the object’s characteristic has occurred. Seeing a red pillar and judging “this is red” is manifest; seeing smoke and inferring fire is concealed, since fire has not been seen at the present moment (that fire-from-smoke was seen before does not alter the present judgement). Whether reasoning-based or not, it subdivides into conceptual and verbal, and is always determinative — never non-conceptual.
True, false, and two-sided — The conceptual modes of apprehension are three.
Concealed exclusion has three modes. True: thinking “this old well has water,” and it does — conformity, with the contrary excluded. Mistaken: thinking “it has no water,” but it does. Doubting: “has it water or not?” Even doubt is exclusion: “is” and “is not” cannot arise together, but the moment “there should be water” arises it excludes “no water,” and before that effect fades “perhaps no water” arises, excluding “water.” These three exhaust its modes.
(ii) Unreal Verbal- and Cognitive-Exclusion Together
α. Defining Characteristic
Unreal exclusion eliminates the real.
The converse of real exclusion. Grasping a non-existent — “no vase” — the existence of vase is severed before the exclusion-cognition.
β. Classification
According to whether the negated has [a basis] or not, Exclusion divides into two types.
By whether the negated is itself present in the world. “No vase,” “no pillar” — the negated exists: existent-negated unreal exclusion. “Barren woman’s son,” “rabbit’s horn,” “turtle’s hair” — the negated has no entity anywhere: non-existent-negated unreal exclusion, which still excludes everything other than itself. Each has verbal and conceptual sub-types.
γ. Unreal Phenomena Are Not Appearance-Objects
γ.1 Actual Reasonableness
Unreal phenomena have no entity; Lacking entity, they are not objects of cognition; Hence the negation of a real phenomenon Is merely imputed and called “unreal.”
They are not appearance-objects because they lack entity. “Knowable” here means object of non-conceptual cognition: conceptually, unreal phenomena are objects of cognition, as the autocommentary states — “no vase” is a graspable universal excluding “vase,” and turtle’s hair and rabbit’s horn serve as pointers to what does not exist. Sakya Paṇḍita’s denial concerns non-conceptual cognition only: these are names that may appear in conception but lack genuine entity. “No pillar” is just the absence of pillar, with no “non-pillar entity.”
γ.2 Dispelling Unreasonable Claims
Dispelling parity with the real.
The real is wholly produced by causes, Without needing to depend on the unreal; The unreal is not produced by causes, Hence the negation of the real is established only before the mind.
Objection. If you deny the unreal on the ground that the real is not present in it, then by parity you may deny the real, since the unreal is not present in it either.
Reply: the two are not on a par. Real entities are produced by their own causes and conditions and depend on no unreal; their existence is established by valid cognition, directly by sense and by inference from cause, entity or effect. Unreal entities have no causal chain at all — a barren woman’s son, a rabbit’s horn — being merely conception’s imputation upon the absence of a real entity; neither direct perception nor inference can establish them. Madhyamaka treatises (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, Madhyamakālaṃkāra) say the same: one depends on its causes, the other on imputation. (“Lacks” here means in the conventional, not the ultimate. Note that pramāṇa’s two truths differ from Madhyamaka’s: in Madhyamaka ultimate truth is emptiness and conventional truth everything knowable; in pramāṇa ultimate truth is the actual nature of things — fire’s heat, water’s wetness — and conventional truth illusory things like the second moon and floaters.)
Dispelling contradiction with valid cognition.
[Objection:] Though rabbit’s horns and the like never existed, Yet the unconditioned phenomena and the two mistaken objects Are established as objects, by the power of their appearing.
[Opponent] Rabbit’s horn is granted non-existent, but the three unconditioned phenomena — space, analytic cessation, non-analytic cessation — and the two mistaken objects — the universal-aspect and “false-seeing-as-true” appearances like the second moon — are established as objects by appearing before cognition.
[Reply:] What appears there is mind itself; Asserted as a totality, it cannot be measured by valid cognition; Hence the three unconditioned phenomena And the two mistaken objects are all unestablished by valid cognition.
What appears as space or the two cessations is just cognition’s entity, with no genuinely existent external entity (as Chapter 1 showed). Self-awareness can illuminate “this is space, this is unconditioned,” and outward grasping can occur, but none of it exceeds self-awareness. Held to be real objects, their particulars cannot be obtained by any valid cognition. (Some Tibetan editions read “object” for “totality”; the result is the same. By Mahāyāna doctrine the three unconditioned are not real: analytic cessation is just the absence of afflictions after wisdom-analysis, not the Vaibhāṣikas’ substantial “separation-from-bondage”; non-analytic cessation is mere absence for lack of conditions, as in the saint whose seeds are exhausted; space is mere unobstructedness. The universal-aspect and second moon were refuted in Chapter 1.)
Dispelling contradiction with worldly common consent.
[Objection:] If space did not exist, This would contradict worldly usage and the treatises.
[Opponent] People speak of “the blue sky and white clouds in space”; Dharmakīrti’s three-mode reasoning uses space as the dissimilar example (“not impermanent, not produced, like space”); the Abhidharmakośa says seeds depend on the five elements including space; tantric treatises speak of three layers of space and of phenomena’s emptiness as space-like.
[Reply:] Lacking a particular it is not direct perception’s object; Lacking any relation it is not inference’s object; Therefore for the existence of space There is no valid cognition that establishes it.
The name of space and its conceived universal are accepted, both imputed; real space is not. Direct perception cannot establish it: lacking a particular — no long, round or red characteristic — no sense-cognition takes it, and the notion of seeing space with the eyes is refuted in the sūtras; self-awareness may present a false image of space, but that is cognition’s own entity. Inference cannot: it works by causal relation or same-nature relation, and space stands in neither with anything (returned to in Chapter 6). The Buddha’s use of space as a metaphor works, as Longchenpa explains, only from the side of non-existence — we grasp space’s non-existence readily and extend the analogy — not because space exists.
The appearing blue is a visible colour, The opening is just unobstructed colour; “Adorning space” and “interstitial space” Do not establish space.
“Adorning space,” the blue sky, is on the Abhidharmakośa’s view the reflected image of Mount Sumeru, with no real blue-entity; being a visible colour it is form, hence not unconditioned space — otherwise space would belong to the form-aggregate. “Interstitial space,” the empty between things, is the imputed unobstructedness between obstructive things. Neither establishes space.
Dispelling contradiction with scripture.
[Objection:] If all unconditioned phenomena did not exist, This would contradict the teaching of permanence.
[Opponent] Dharmakīrti divides phenomena into conditioned and unconditioned and uses space as a permanent example; denying the permanent unconditioned contradicts him and worldly usage alike.
[Reply:] The non-Buddhists and the Śrāvaka schools — These two eternalist parties — assert real permanence; But Dharmakīrti, in negating impermanence, Merely posits the term “permanent.”
[Vaiśeṣika and Vaibhāṣika] Both hold the unconditioned substantially real and permanent — the Vaiśeṣikas making sound a quality of space, the Vaibhāṣikas making the unconditioned substantial. Neither position has reliable grounding.
In the lesser vehicle the conditioned–unconditioned division is simply into “is” and “is-not,” and “is-not” carries no substantial entity: pillar divides into real-pillar and no-pillar, the latter unconditioned and unreal, the mere absence of pillar — as unfilled space is called “space.” So no phenomenon falls outside the two. Dharmakīrti’s use of space as example is from the side of negating impermanence, positing “permanent” as a conventional term; the Pramāṇavārttika asks expressly, “Are unreal phenomena truly permanent?” — they are not. Conventionally the usage is unobjectionable.
Pause Verse
Sense-cognition is like a mute with clear eyes; Conception is like a blind man skilled in speech; Self-awareness, with all faculties intact, Serves as the link between these two.
The five sense-cognitions see clearly but cannot articulate; discrimination — “this is blue, that is white” — is not their work. Conception is blind to the particular, never directly seeing colour, sound, scent or taste, yet speaks eloquently even of what it has never seen. Self-awareness has both faculties and mediates: the senses present the object’s features with self-awareness illuminating them, self-awareness conveys them to conception, and conception discriminates.
These are not three distinct minds in one continuum — that would give one being three continuums. They are isolates of cognition’s functions: when conception discriminates, self-awareness is at work; when sense-cognition presents the object faithfully, self-awareness illuminates it too.
3. Dispelling Disputes
Five sub-sections.
a. Dispelling the Dispute that Without a Universal, Naming Would Be Impossible
[Objection:] Since you deny universals, Such names would have to be without cause.
[Vaiśeṣika] The universal exists externally, since words have a direct relation to it. Without an external universal there would be no universal vase to cause the word “vase,” and the word would arise from nothing. (Universal and exclusion are alike here, viewed from different isolates.)
[Reply:] Since words are deployed driven by the wish to express, They do not necessarily depend on an object.
Language is produced by the wish to express: the thought to be conveyed motivates the speaker, and one does not speak only when the object exists. Were words required to depend on the particular’s existence, “barren woman’s son” and “rabbit’s horn” could not be uttered — yet obviously they can. Words and objects have no necessary relation; otherwise calling someone the sun would dispel darkness.
[Objection:] If so, then expressing The attribute and the bearer-of-attributes would become meaningless.
[Opponent] If words bear no necessary relation to the object, “white conch” (expressing the bearer, the whole conch being white) and “the white of the conch” (expressing the attribute, excluding the conch’s conditionedness, impermanence and shape) would be conflated, since words can be uttered without reference to the particular.
[Reply:] Although the object’s nature is one, By the force of the wish to speak, two distinct words are used.
From the entity’s side, “white conch” and “the conch’s whiteness” are the same conch, and no expression leaves that entity. But the speaker’s wishes differ: one wishes to speak of the bearer without extracting an attribute, another to speak only of the whiteness, settling on one attribute and excluding the rest. One entity, two wishes, two functionally distinct expressions — hence no conflation. (“Wish-to-say” is a standard term in the Pramāṇavārttika.)
b. Dispelling the Dispute that Exclusion Would Be Mutually Dependent
i. The Opponent’s Position
[Objection:] The word for exclusion which negates the directly contradictory Mutually depends on what it excludes; If one is unestablished, neither is established in the end; Hence exclusion cannot exist.
[Non-Buddhist] Universal is bound to particular, language to object. If saying “tree” excludes all non-trees, then to exclude non-tree one must first know non-tree, to know non-tree one must first know tree, to know tree one must first exclude non-tree — an endless regress. Neither is established, so exclusion cannot exist.
ii. Refutation
(a) Refutation by Parity
[Reply:] If you yourselves do not eliminate the directly contradictory, There is no way to know the entity itself; If you do, since you cannot know the contradictory either, All conventions would come to nothing.
Setting our own exclusion aside: when you establish the name “vase,” do you exclude non-vase? If not, your “vase” has no established entity, and “bring me a vase” might be answered with cow-dung or a flashlight, the words having excluded nothing. If you do, then on your own account knowing non-vase requires first knowing vase — the very regress you charge us with — and naming-conventions collapse. And if you allow that “bring me the vase” both establishes vase and excludes the rest, that is our exclusion, and you have conceded.
[Objection:] We do not establish a real entity by eliminating its directly contradictory; Rather, on seeing an object one assigns its name, And when applying the convention one knows it accordingly.
[Opponent] Naming is by ostension: someone sees a branch-and-leaf thing and calls it “tree,” others adopt the name; no enumeration of the excluded is needed.
[Reply:] If at the moment of naming you do not eliminate “non-tree,” Tree itself is not established; If you have eliminated it, then though tree is established, It is established by exclusion.
If at the original naming non-trees were not excluded, “tree” was never established as a category and everything would equally be tree; if they were excluded, that is exclusion. (Exclusion of contraries requires no assembly at which all non-vases are formally excluded: convention sets the name, and each hearer naturally takes its excluded contraries with it.)
(b) Actual Reply
[Self-position:] On directly seeing an object with branches and leaves, One gives it the name “tree”; This name is applied to its kind, And the kind is nothing apart from exclusion.
Dharmakīrti’s reply and our own. First ostension on a branch-and-leaf thing; then, in usage, the name is treated as if it stood for a real thing and applied to all members of the type. But “type,” “kind,” “universal” and “exclusion” are merely virtual, with no real entity; apart from exclusion no kind exists. (As with a baby named today: the name applies thereafter, but the continuing universal is conventional.) So language has a fixated connection to objects but no direct one — were it direct, only existent things could be named.
Objection. Then every word becomes a specific-affirmative — avadhāraṇa. (The Madhyamakālaṃkāra discusses this: “Only the pillar is impermanent” excludes all non-pillars from impermanence.) Reply: they are not. Every word has the dual force of refutation and establishment plus its own particular force, but the specific-affirmative is stronger than ordinary speech — “the vase is impermanent” does not entail “only the vase is impermanent.” What operates in ordinary words is better called non-existential negation.
Because they are deployed by negating the rest, All words possess specifying force.
Without the explicit specific-affirmative, every word excludes its own contraries and so carries specifying force. “Bring me the water in a vase” specifies water as wanted and the vase as vessel; unspecified, any vessel might be used. As the Pramāṇavārttika has it, every word has both functions, refutation and establishment: ask for X and X-things come, non-X-things do not. Communication is grounded in exclusion.
c. Dispelling the Dispute that Without an Object of Negation, Exclusion Cannot Operate
[Objection:] Words like “knowable” have nothing to exclude; Their negation is impossible.
[Opponent] Exclusion must eliminate contraries, but “knowable” has none — it covers real and unreal, all phenomena — and likewise “all,” “every,” “without remainder.” So some words would have exclusion and some not, contrary to your account.
[Reply:] Even if no other real entity remains, There is still imputed negation.
From the entity’s side no phenomenon remains beyond “knowable” — but exclusion is not set up on the entity’s side. In conception one can still set up the exclusion of “non-knowable” and the rest, though no such entity exists. The whole difficulty comes from the early-pramāṇa mixing of universal and particular.
The same point dissolves the puzzles of infinite division of particles, infinite definitions and infinite reasoning: all belong to conception’s domain, where one may be divided into many and many gathered into one. On the side of the entity no such operation occurs.
d. Dispelling the Dispute about Whether the Isolate Is Established as Real
i. The Opponent’s Position
[Objection:] If your isolate is real, it has all the faults of the universal; If unreal, it has no power or function; Hence the isolate is not needed.
The isolate-debate is equivalent to the exclusion-debate (the autocommentary states that exclusion and isolate are at times one). When the pillar’s entity is established and other things excluded, is that isolate real or unreal? If real, it incurs the faults of asserting a real universal in Chapter 3 — for each particular member there should be a real universal-isolate, and examination finds none. If unreal, it has no power or function, like a rabbit’s horn; so what use is it?
ii. Reply
(a) Refuting Other Replies
[Reply to others:] Here many Tibetan masters assert That the isolate of a real entity is itself real. If so, the faults already stated for the universal Cannot be removed.
[Tibetan early-pramāṇa] Shawa Chöksang and, later, certain Gelug Hetuvidyā masters held that the isolate of an unreal phenomenon is unreal but the isolate of a real phenomenon is real — the pillar’s isolate real, else it would have no force. Sakya Paṇḍita is dissatisfied: this leaves the faults already established against a real universal untouched, universal, isolate and exclusion being alike here.
Recall the earlier refutation: [Vaiśeṣika and Nyāya] held universal and particular distinct, [Sāṃkhya] held them identical, but all asserted a real universal pervading every gold, silver, copper and iron vase. Does it pervade all members or only some? Pervading some is unreasonable; pervading all raises the already-analysed dilemma of whether each member has its own universal or one universal extends over all. If Buddhists accept real isolates, they cannot refute this, having conceded the same.
If the isolate that excludes “non-tree” were real: Were it identical with sandalwood, other [trees] would not be tree; Were it identical with the others, sandalwood would not be tree — Because each entity’s own nature is not another’s.
If the real non-tree-excluding isolate exists, is it one with sandalwood or with the other trees? If one with sandalwood, then since sandalwood’s particles and qualities cannot be one with cypress or pine, those are not trees and only sandalwood is; if one with cypress, sandalwood is not a tree. No entity’s particles lie in another. (Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika accounts of compositional particles differ slightly but agree on this.)
Apply it to “human”: if the isolate excluding non-human is real, is it one with men or with women? If distinct from both, a real human-universal should stand alongside them, and pramāṇa finds none. If one with men, then since men and women cannot share a single entity, women are not human; conversely for women. (The attempted escape — many real isolates, one for men and one for women — requires the real isolate to be omnipresent; but once a real vase-isolate is identical with the gold vase it cannot also be one with the silver vase.)
This matches the Chapter 3 reasoning on the universal; Chapter 4’s question is whether external objects contain particular-exclusion. They do not. As the Pramāṇavārttika says, no entity mixes its being with another’s; on the entity no establishment or refutation can occur. (Khedrup Je and Mipham accept “particular-exclusion” only as a conventional concept. Compare the Platform Sūtra: two monks dispute whether the flag moves or the wind, and Huineng answers, “neither — your minds move.” In the external object there is no relation, no exclusion, no establishment; in our minds there are. Planting this insight deeply is the gateway by which pramāṇa passes naturally into Mind-Only.)
Pause Verse
Those who claim to uphold Dharmakīrti’s intent Yet refute the master’s reasoning, Are like a troop of monkeys in the forest Soiling the green trees with their dung.
Whoever holds universal, isolate or exclusion to be real has not understood Dharmakīrti, who argues in the Pramāṇavārttika with seven or eight reasonings that the universal cannot be a real entity. His authority is denied by no pramāṇa scholar, Tibetan or Chinese; he and Dignāga are counted among the Six Ornaments as the propagators of pramāṇa. To claim his intent while taking up what he refuted, and to found a school on it, is to pollute the very tree one lives in. (Sakya Paṇḍita is fond of such animal analogies when displeased.)
(b) Our Own Reply
The isolate is not established as a real entity; Analysed as a mode of cognitive apprehension, It is fully present in all real things; Hence exclusion has no such fault.
Our isolate is not real. Were it real, exclusion would lie in the external object and sandalwood and cypress would be one, since the non-tree-excluding isolate would lie on each. Analysed by mind, exclusion is simply an apprehension-mode — misidentifying universal as particular for the purpose of judgement — and this applies to pillar, vase and every same-kind entity; it genuinely does pervade. At the conceptual level exclusion pervades gold and silver vases alike, precisely because it is not real; at the entity level it could not pervade at all. So the position is fault-free.
By this, even a single word Has the dual function of refutation and establishment.
Each word establishes its own entity and excludes the rest. “Use the vase to bring water” tells the listener a vase and not a pot; unspecified, anything would serve. Languages differ on the surface and share this capacity. But “function” does not mean actual doing: saying “vase” does not produce a vase or physically block other objects, as commentators stress. Words do not act; they have capacities.
Objection. Then the word becomes the agent of establishment and refutation.
Two phenomena cannot be one; The isolate has no nature of its own; Hence by means of speaking the isolate The real entity itself is established.
Reply: the word is no agent. The vase’s entity is real, the isolate excluding non-vase unreal, and real and unreal cannot be one entity — the word “vase” is not at once real establishment and unreal exclusion. Saying “tree,” the entity is established; the side excluding non-tree is its isolate. To the thought that the vase, being really vase, intrinsically excludes non-vase so that the excluding isolate is one with it: the excluding does operate, but only in conception — we mistake the conceptual universal for the particular vase, say “vase,” and in our minds non-vase is excluded. Had the isolate a genuine entity, saying “vase” would itself produce a real “non-vase exclusion,” which does not happen; the exclusion is universal and isolate only.
e. Dispelling the Dispute that Without a Universal, Co-Substantiality Would Be Impossible
[Objection:] If distinct things have no universal, Then “lotus,” “blue,” and the rest Could not converge in one entity; Hence co-substantiality would be impossible.
[Vaiśeṣika, with certain Buddhist masters] A real universal must exist and operate, formed by many tightly-bound dharmas. Without it, gold and silver vases could not converge as “vase,” and the blue lotus — blue, fragrant, tasting, conditioned, a flower — could not be co-substantially all of these. Without a totalising real entity binding the parts, no convergence occurs: I am Han, a monk, an Easterner, a conditioned phenomenon, a sentient being, and these should not coexist on me — yet they do.
The dispute arises from failing to grasp the relation of universal and particular — that is, from confusing the conceptual universal with the actual particular by misidentification.
[Reply:] Blue lotus and its blue colour are not distinct entities; Exclusion divides them and again gathers them; Before conceptual cognition they are co-substantial, But this is not the domain of sense-cognition that takes the particular.
The blue lotus and its colour are not really distinct; that they appear distinct, or co-substantial, is conception’s setup. Exclusion sets up “blue lotus” by negating non-blue-lotus, “blue colour” by negating non-blue, “conditioned” by negating non-conditioned, and countless further distinctions on its smell and shape. Conception first divides, then gathers — conceptually. Likewise in one person we set up Han, yellow-skinned, layperson or monk: fine in conception, not inhering on the entity. Were many things really inhering on each entity, like blades of grass side by side each excluding the others, sense-cognition should perceive them; it gets only the lotus’s entity.
So co-substantial-grasping is exclusion, not appearance. Were it appearance, eye-cognition would have to see the lotus’s smell and shape along with its colour, recognise it as a blue lotus, as conditioned, as a summer plant — none of which can be objects of eye-cognition. Co-substantiality is conception’s, not the particular’s: particular goes with appearance, universal with exclusion.
(Pramāṇa does not teach ultimate emptiness — the Pramāṇasamuccaya says it cannot of itself convey emptiness — but serves as a ladder to liberation, as Nāgārjuna, Śāntarakṣita and other Madhyamaka masters say.)
Concluding Pause Verse
One who directly sees both establishment and exclusion, Endowed with clear eyes and bright wisdom, Sees through what is to be known in pramāṇa — Realising its truth, like the Buddha.
Sentient beings apprehend the particular by appearance before sense-cognition, and the universal by exclusion. Of all pramāṇa’s secret keys exclusion is the most vital, like the life-faculty: without it there is no clarity in pramāṇa at all.
One who has mastered both establishment (appearance) and exclusion sees conventional truth as it is, with no error in selecting and rejecting — the two faculties being like sharp wisdom and sharp eyes. Such a scholar is “like a Buddha,” fearless in debate and unfailing in distinction; the comparison is to his command of conventional matters, not to the Buddha’s actual realisation as liberated knower of all phenomena.
This concludes Chapter Four.
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