Immeasurable Joy: Being One Meditation of a “Bodhisattva Vaibhāṣika”

Abstract

This paper considers the practice of immeasurable joy (muditā) as presented in the so-called Yogalehrbuch, a seventh century Sanskrit “yoga manual” from Qïzïl, on the northern rim of the Tarim Basin. It demonstrates that the author of the text, whose purpose is to describe the journey of a yogin on the path to the awakening of a Bodhisattva, relied on some version of the *Vibhāṣā, the voluminous treatise on Buddhist metaphysics from which the Vaibhāṣika school derives its name. Identifying several parallels between the two texts, it presents a new edition of select passages of the manuscript from the preface to immeasurable joy which constitute what the text terms a theory of practice (prayoganirdeśa). On this basis, it is shown that the specific principles of Vaibhāṣika ontology and phenomenology conveyed by this theory come to be instantiated at the experiential, structural and representational levels of the practice (prayoga), which the text primarily serves to example.

1. Ein buddhistisches Yogalehrbuch and an Elusive Yogaśāstra

There is much today that remains unclear about the text Dieter Schlingloff ([1964] 2006) styled Ein buddhistisches Yogalehrbuch.1 No colophon is preserved in what little is left of the manuscript, and so its title, authorship, and a good deal of its contents remain quite the mystery.2 We know the work enjoyed popularity in Central Asia around the seventh century, with several Sanskrit versions circulating in the region of Kučā on the northern rim of the Tarim Basin.3 But its history is otherwise unknown, and there is some evidence of somewhat earlier origins, possibly in “Kashmir” or another such north-westerly region of South Asia.4 More certain is that it was authored by a practitioner of yoga (yogin, yogācāra), a Bodhisattva by purpose and Sarvāstivādin by doctrine, whose journey through the vistas of meditation the text so vividly describes, with its 15 practices (prayoga),5 doctrine and cosmology all drawn from the teachings of that school (Schlingloff [1964] 2006, pp. 10, 26–33). Several elements have nonetheless proved more troublesome to define, suggesting to some a Mahāyāna, Yogācāra or Tantric influence (Ruegg 1967; Bretfeld 2003; O’Brien-Kop 2022; Abe 2024); a rather colourful medley of attributions that indicate the perplexities the text presents and our inability to fully untangle them.

The author does however appear on one occasion in the text and with one potentially illuminating purpose: to refer the reader to the teachings of a certain yogaśāstra(s) on account of his dealing with the practice alone (prayogamātraṃ).6 No further reference is made to this work, though it was evidently central to the authorship of the Yogalehrbuch and so indispensable to any yogin who may wish to use it. Some speculation has been had as to its identity, with others suggesting it is another yoga manual, such as of the like encountered in Chinese translations of the fifth century.7 However, this seems to be unintuitive. Both these and other texts of the genre extant in Tocharian, together constituting what remains textually of the Central Asian yoga tradition, are overly akin to the Yogalehrbuch in form and function, and the words of the author would rather imply that the yogaśāstra(s) went precisely beyond the kinds of illustrations of practice to characterise such works.8 Although this purpose is not made plain, there is some indication of it in where the reference itself arises, namely, within a preface to the practice on the elements (dhātuprayoga), the second meditation of the text. This reflects a structure throughout, whereby descriptions of each of the following practices (prayoga) are all first introduced (and at times closed) by contrastingly technical passages, on one occasion named a theory of practice (prayoganirdeśa).9 Herein is where the role of the yogaśāstra(s) would appear to lie. It was not another yoga manual to treat of the “practice alone” but dealt with the subject in a presumably more conceptual manner.

Likely the true identity of this yogaśāstra(s) will forever remain unknown (barring any new manuscript discoveries, of course).10 That said, a possible hint has more recently come to light. Following the discovery of Yamabe Nobuyoshi, it has since become quite clear that the Yogalehrbuch is intimately related to the *Vibhāṣā,11 the voluminous commentary on Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma whence the Vaibhāṣika school derives its name.12 Several correspondences are to be found in all three Chinese translations of that work. The scheme of yoga itself, in opening with the practice on impurity (aśubhaprayoga), would appear to follow something of that advocated by it.13 A listing of four (as opposed to six) perfections (pāramitā) is likely the invention of the same,14 as is an enumeration of eighteen attributes that form the Buddha’s body of qualities (dharmaśarīra).15 Yet more compelling still are a series of formulae encountered in the prefaces to the four immeasurables (apramāṇa), friendliness (maitrī), compassion (karuṇā), joy (muditā) and equanimity (upekṣā), for these form a part of the aforementioned theory of practice, detailing an ontology of each in the precise same idiom as the *Vibhāṣā.16

One cannot understate the value of these latter parallels, not least because the four prefaces to the immeasurables belong to highly fragmentary folios of the manuscript and as such posed serious problems to Schlingloff, upon whose reconstructions significant improvements can now be made. They moreover confirm that the author was indeed citing from another work, albeit not (one hastens to add) from any *Vibhāṣā known to us today, as none of its witnesses, though all of them close, are quite the same. It is possible the author was aware of another version circulating in Kashmir, say, if indeed the origins of the Yogalehrbuch are to be sought there. He17 may equally have known of one current in Central Asia, more akin perhaps to those to which the coeval Sanskrit fragments from Kučā and Turfan once belonged (Enomoto 1996; Dietz 2004, p. 62). That the *Vibhāṣā had itself become the object of inquiry by the fifth century is of some consideration, as several of the works composed around Kashmir at the time, either for or against it, like the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya of Vasubandhu,18 the Nyāyānusāra of Saṃghabhadra,19 or the Abhidharmadīpa,20 represent some of the more commonly encountered texts in the region of Turfan in the seventh century (Dietz 2004, pp. 61–63). All we can know for sure is that the author’s interaction with the *Vibhāṣā was in part indirect and likely enabled via an intermediary directly reliant upon it—that is to say, the elusive yogaśāstra(s).

Considered in the context of Buddhism in Central Asia and China around the middle of the first millennium, any of these last scenarios would not be unexpected. One Sanskrit fragment from Yarχoto, near Turfan, which has already been associated with the Yogalehrbuch due to listing a similar series of meditations (Schlingloff [1964] 2006, pp. 26–27),21 also refers to the dharmaśarīra and its eighteen qualities and was thus related in some form or fashion to the *Vibhāṣā.22 Other meditation texts in Tocharian likewise rely on the work for their own theory and practice (Kudara 1972; Huard 2022, pp. 18–20). Records from China speak of Vaibhāṣika Dharma masters (piposha fashi 毘婆沙法師) engaging with Mahāyāna meditation masters (dacheng chanshi 大乘禪師), including such figures as Kumārajīva (d. 413 CE) of Kučā,23 whose own translations of meditation texts into Chinese exhibit an admixture of Vaibhāṣika and Mahāyāna thought (Greene 2021, pp. 52–53, 65). Several commentarial (upadeśa) works also offer a Mahāyāna response to the text, such as the *Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa 大智度論 (T 1509), translated and redacted by Kumārajīva (Zacchetti 2021, p. 110ff), or the *Maitreyaparipṛcchopadeśa 彌勒菩薩所問經論 (T 1525), translated in the early sixth century by the Indian monk Bodhiruci (d. 527 CE),24 which notably cites the same passages as the Yogalehrbuch in presenting its own theory of the four immeasurables.25 There were indeed many discussions going on with the *Vibhāṣā, particularly on the subject of meditation and the path to awakening, forming the discourses of those we may in many cases quite aptly name “Bodhisattva Vaibhāṣika”.26

In what follows is an initial attempt at a partial reading of the conversation that occurred between the author of the Yogalehrbuch and the *Vibhāṣā on the subject of the four immeasurables. A complete study would demand reeditions of all four prefaces in the former together with full consideration of all their parallels in the three witnesses of the latter. This task, however, is great and shall have to wait.27 For now, the choice is for but one meditation, immeasurable joy (muditā), whose analysis is presently served by its being the shortest and most complete of the four in the manuscript, both in its prefatory theory of practice and in its description of the practice itself.

Met within these passages, namely, is the opportunity to rightly situate the Yogalehrbuch in its philosophical tradition and so explore that long-standing question concerning the relationship between theory and practice, which are so plainly juxtaposed in the work. The text is in fact to be considered quite unique in this regard, as other yoga manuals of the genre show little concern with theory, rather giving priority to practice (Deleanu 1992, p. 46; Greene 2021, pp. 62–63), whilst precisely the reverse is the case for the *Vibhāṣā, in which little of the ins and outs of practice can be gleaned from its bare taxonomies (Buswell 1997, p. 603). How the two threads are woven together is nonetheless esoteric, with the vagaries of the author’s description of experience in yoga entangled with the intricacies of Vaibhāṣika ontology in manifold and elaborate ways. Demanded of this line of inquiry, therefore, is not merely understanding of the exposition of the *Vibhāṣā, itself a formidable task, as all versions of the text differ and no part of each can truly be read apart from their wholes, but also of how this was then interpreted by the author of the Yogalehrbuch and instantiated in the practice he describes. Quite clear is that he follows something of the map drawn up by some Vaibhāṣikas, which has far-reaching implications for the very design and phenomenal quality of his yoga, but also that he departs from it, vivifying its topography in the territory of experience by way of doctrinal metaphors that come to be reified as the objects of meditation. As Schlingloff ([1964] 2006, p. 28) rather poetically put it: “Das Gleichnis wird hier28 zum Sinn-Bild, die Anschauung zur Vision; — der Mönch wird zum Yogin.”

2. Briefly on the Immeasurables

The four immeasurables, or abodes of Brahma (brahmavihāra), as they are otherwise known, are an old element of Buddhist practice, featuring in the earliest strata of canonical scripture (sūtra).29 By an oft-repeated formula, a monk is therein asked to radiate, with his mind, friendliness, compassion, joy and equanimity throughout all directions, until each is immeasurable and pervades the entire world.30 The goal is sublimation of the affections, resulting in the practitioner being without enmity (avera) and without ill will (abyāpajjha). However, this end alone is not regarded as sufficing liberation, and the practices are rather treated as peripheral to it, being the pursuit of non-Buddhists (Bronkhorst 1993, pp. 67–69), and so as “leading neither to aversion, dispassion, cessation, calm, knowledge, awakening nor nirvāṇa, but to rebirth in the world of Brahma.”31

Works of Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma elaborated extensively upon the practices,32 now presenting them as the means to obtain the sublimest of fruits, the merit of Brahma (brāhmapuṇya),33 and envisioning the four not only as expansive radiations but as further taking immeasurable sentient beings (sattva) as the object (ālaṃbana),34 this being the first of many reasons the *Vibhāṣā provides in explanation of why the immeasurables are so named.35 According to a model of practice first made standard by that text, a yogin is said to resolve or imagine (adhi√muc),36 by way of a certain disposition (āśaya) and manner (ākāra),37 directing friendliness, compassion, joy and equanimity to all sentient beings (sattva) of the realm of sensuality (kāmadhātu), the terrain of the cosmos to which he himself belongs. This is because he is to first empathise with those most intimate to him, distinguishing among them seven kinds (prakāra): friends (mitra), neutrals (udāsin) and enemies (amitra), with the former and the latter sub-divided into the strong (adhimātra),38 the middling (madhya) and the weak (mṛdu).39 Not much is said as regards what is to unfold in the experience of meditation, apart from the notion that a yogin is to perceive the representations of pleasure (lexiang 樂相, *sukhanimitta), signs of the feeling he resolves to give unto the sentient beings, and is to recall the people he has previously seen whilst on alms in the city, from the bedraggled beggar on the street to the resplendent prince atop an elephant, and to empathetically imagine their pains and pleasures.40

Each immeasurable is now presented as the remedy (pratipakṣa) for certain emotional afflictions (kleśa), with friendliness and compassion remedying hate (dveṣa), joy dissatisfaction (arati) and equanimity craving (lobha), among others (Dhammajoti 2010, pp. 171–72). They are, however, said to only be for the suppression (viṣkambhaṇa) of the afflictions, not their eradication (prahāṇa), for the meditations involve not attention to reality (tattvamanaskāra), which takes the very entities (dharmas) of reality as the object, but attention to resolution (adhimuktimanaskāra), because the sentient beings to whom the yogin imagines extending each feeling are the result of his volition, are not ultimately real, and so the resulting experience is deemed a delusion (viparyāsa).41

3. The Immeasurables in the Yogalehrbuch

Near half the Yogalehrbuch is dedicated to describing the four immeasurables, suggesting that they held a central place in the overall scheme of yoga.42 Delving a little deeper, one indeed finds this intimation confirmed, for the passages to detail both their theory and practice are rather conspicuous, and for several reasons.

Little of the canonical formula remains in the Yogalehrbuch, which rather mirrors much of what we find in the *Vibhāṣā. This is particularly true of the theory of practice given in the four prefaces, all of which serve two main ends.43 First is to order the immeasurables, with each said to be pursued immediately (anaṃtaraṃ, samanantaraṃ) after the last, as per the progression stated in scripture and likewise affirmed in the *Vibhāṣā.44 This sequence, we are told, is due to the purposes they respectively serve, either as the remedy (pratipakṣa) for a set of afflictions or due to the specific dispositions (āśaya), manners (ākāra) and sorts of attention (manasikāra) according to which the yogin is to proceed with each in practice.45 Second is to detail an ontology of the immeasurables in terms of their essence (svabhāva), basis (āśraya), object (ālaṃbana) and ground (bhūmi). The inclusion of this latter analysis is particularly marked, for the author here reproduces a Vaibhāṣika taxonomy near verbatim, categorising what a given immeasurable is in reality, as a discrete metaphysical entity (dharma), and the several subjective and objective conditions under which each may actualise in any possible moment of phenomenal appearance.

Then come descriptions of the practices themselves, instantiations (we must presume) of the theory they follow. All open with the preliminaries, according to which the yogin takes the aforementioned seven kinds of sentient beings as the object (ālaṃbana), following the paradigm given for each immeasurable in the *Vibhāṣā. Next is the practice of the adept and at this point the Yogalehrbuch departs from any description of meditation provided in the *Vibhāṣā (or any other work of Abhidharma, for that matter). Now on the ground (bhūmi) of absorption (dhyāna), the experience of the yogin is marked by a qualitative shift. Points on his body (āśraya), such as the hollow between the eyebrows (bhrūvivara), the heart (hṛdaya) and the navel (nābha), are transformed into the source whence an entire knowable (jñeya) cosmos emanates and whiter it returns,46 and all sentient beings of the realm of sensuality (kāmadhātu), from the hells below to the heavens above, are seen and heard occupying fantastic scapes, together with all and sundry (sarva) in between, within and without.

What makes the practice of the immeasurables even the more striking is their place in the overall tale told by the text. For it is by their unfolding that the entire drama reaches its climax, with an unveiling of the ultimate purpose of the yogin, who now bears the epithet “Bodhisattva”.47 First making a vow (praṇidhāna) for awakening (bodhi) when in the throes of compassion (karuṇā),48 he later finds himself stood in equanimity (upekṣā) at the gate to the city of nirvāṇa (nirvāṇapura), about to cross its threshold out of the apathy he now feels, which would have him turn from the world, until an entire ocean of sentient beings cries out to him in pain and great compassion (mahākaruṇā) suddenly appears in his heart, compelling him to turn back to aid the suffering, thereby fulfilling his earlier vow.49 Even though the immeasurables are here too presented as not themselves sufficing ultimate liberation, they clearly have a role to play in leading the yogin to it, up to the very gate to nirvāṇa no less, and indeed away. They can hence hardly be described as peripheral to the final goal but are rather entirely central to it, to the awakening, namely, of a Bodhisattva Vaibhāṣika.

Hopefully, the foregoing sketch has proved sufficient to gain a sense of the immeasurables in Buddhist thought, their position in the Yogalehrbuch, and the general terms of their relation to the *Vibhāṣā. Now we turn to immeasurable joy (muditā) to fill in some of the details (and there are many), beginning with the two sections of the theory of practice given in the preface, followed by a single passage from the description of practice to come thereafter.

4. The Theory of Practice

Joy is theorised by the Blessed One after compassion. Now, as to their potential50 + + + + + + + + + + + +. For what reason is the theory of joy after compassion? Namely, it is (1) after the remedy for malice, for the purpose of visualising the remedy for jealousy51 and dissatisfaction;52 (2) after the remedy for delight in another’s pain, for the purpose of visualising the remedy for lack of delight in another’s pleasure; (3) after attention to the manner of aversion, for the purpose of manifesting attention that is consistent with the manner of enjoyment;53 or (4) after attention to the disposition to remove pain, for the purpose of manifesting attention to the disposition for welfare, pleasure and enjoying.54

Opening the preface to joy, we first encounter an appeal to authority and an explanation of why she55 is to come after (anantaraṃ) compassion. The goal is to coordinate the two, with the suggestion that the former is the remedy for certain problems resulting from the latter. Although the precise nature of their relation is not altogether clear (to me at least), the sense of it all, it would seem, is that because compassion involves the disposition to remove the pain of another (duḥkhāpanaya), itself a remedy for malice (vihiṃsā), she can, by her focus, lead a yogin to themselves experience pain,56 jealousy (īrṣya) and a lack of delight (aprīti) for the painless and pleasurable state of this other, as well as dissatisfaction (arati) with their own.57 Joy is the remedy because her manner is enjoying (anumodanākāra, prāmodyākāra), being the disposition (āśaya) to enjoy others and so rejoice with them (cp. Guenther 1957, p. 164; Maithrimurthi 1999, pp. 134–37).

The language of this list of remedies is rather technical and one suspects that it derives from another source. An extensive search, however, turned up nought, with only one resonant attempt to so harmonise the immeasurables identified in the *Vibhāṣā, which proved of little help.58 This is nonetheless a not unexpected result if we consider that these are likely the words of the yogaśāstra(s). It is therefore significant that the only extant preface to not provide a list of remedies is that of the practice on the elements (dhātuprayoga), where, as observed above, sole reference is made to that work(s). What follows is moreover quite clearly a citation, detailing an ontology of joy in terms entirely consistent with the *Vibhāṣā, of which I here present a new edition (Figure 1).

atha kiṃsvabhāvā muditā tad ucyate •60 sauma(nasy)e(ndr)i[ya]svabhāvā61 sā tu sānuparivartā sasaṃprayogā parigṛ(hyamānā kāmāvacarā catuḥ)skandhasvabhāvā • r(ū)pāvacar(ā) paṃcaskandhasvabhāvā62 • āśraye kāmadhātvāśrayā63 • ālaṃbane kāmadhātvālaṃban(ā)64 bhūmi(taḥ kāmadhātau dh)y(ā)nadvaye ca65 tatra sau(manasyend)[r](i)y(a)sadbhā(vāt||)66 YL 153r2-467

Now, what is the essence of joy? Namely, her essence is the faculty of gladness. But including her accompaniments and conjunctions, her sphere is sensuality and essence four aggregates (or) her sphere is materiality and essence five aggregates. With respect to the basis, her basis is the realm of sensuality. With respect to the object, her object is the realm of sensuality. As regards the ground, (she is) on the realm of sensuality and the (first) two absorptions because there the faculty of gladness has actual being.

Parallels for all elements of this passage are to be found in the *Vibhāṣā, on which basis it can be parsed into four discrete formulae, defining joy by her essence (svabhāva), basis (āśraya), object (ālaṃbana) and ground (bhūmi). Their identification is significant, representing (together with those from the prefaces of the other three immeasurables) the only attestations in Sanskrit of the kind of wording used by the *Vibhāṣā, which regularly applies these and indeed many more categories to several states of absorption, albeit in a different order to that encountered here and often with a detailed exegesis under each.68 Supposing the author relied directly on some version of the *Vibhāṣā, we can say that he was highly selective in doing so, only quoting the definitions of greatest relevance to his theory of practice. Such differences could just as well indicate that he drew upon another source, such as the yogaśāstra(s), which had already done the work of creating the digest we read here. One can therefore only guess as to why these four categories were finally chosen. Doubtless they were considered sufficient, and by definition fundamental, presumably reflecting a pragmatic concern with the utility of the text and the practice of the immeasurables it serves to example. Notwithstanding this apparent concision, there is still much contained in these pithy expressions and appreciating their significance will demand no small degree of consideration.

4.1. The Essence of Joy

The *Vibhāṣā marks a turning point in the history of the Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma. Unlike earlier works of the tradition, whose purpose was solely epistemological, listing a total set of phenomena (dharma) available to knowledge, the concern here became overtly metaphysical, with the goal of determining which were to be considered entities (dharma), substantial reals (dravya). Both ends were achieved by what Collett Cox (2004, pp. 558–65) terms the “method of inclusion”: the attribution of an essence or particular being (svabhāva) to a given phenomenon, which either serves to subsume it under another category or to mark its particular quality (svalakṣaṇa) and own being (ātmabhāva) as an independent, unique, unchanging and knowable real.69 At times, this dual ontology produced a discrepancy in which phenomena held categorical (belonging to a list) or metaphysical (belonging to itself) status;70 a problem further exacerbated by the language of the *Vibhāṣā itself, wherein the same formulation is used to define both.

It is precisely this “method of inclusion” that we encounter in the first definition from the Yogalehrbuch: “Now, what is the essence of joy? Namely, her essence is the faculty of gladness (saumanasyendriya).”71 Differences in the details nonetheless make clear that the author did not lift this definition directly from the *Vibhāṣā, wherein the question posed is rather generalised, reading, “What is the essence of the four immeasurables?”72 to which the three versions give differing answers for each and not all correspond to those the Yogalehrbuch provides.73 Disagreement thus reigned amongst metaphysicians as to what ultimately makes the four immeasurables real. Joy too was the subject of some debate in this regard.74 But here the situation is more straightforward because the definition given in the Yogalehrbuch agrees with all three versions of the *Vibhāṣā in naming her essence the faculty of gladness, itself affirmed as a real entity (dharma).75 Qua her essence, therefore, joy was regarded as a uniquely knowable real.

Like many other entities that are the purview of meditation, joy is said to have as her sphere either sensuality (kāmāvacara) or materiality (rūpāvacara): a difference in whether she respectively appears without or within a state of absorption (dhyāna), or, to put it another way, on an unconcentrated (asamāhita) or concentrated (samāhita) ground (bhūmi). This reflects an early principle of Buddhist thought that a parallel is to be drawn between the spheres (avacara) of perception and the realms (dhātu) of the cosmos, such that the four absorptions themselves represent discrete terrains of the realm of materiality (rūpadhātu) (Gethin 1997, esp. 191–94). Innovated upon here, in this charting of oneself and the world,76 is the notion that the joy of a given sphere involves specific other entities to coincide with her as accompaniments (anuparivartaka) or conjunctions (saṃprayoga),77 which in turn determines under which of the five aggregates (skandha) of experience she is subsumable, these being materiality (rūpa), feelings (vedanā), conceptions (saṃjñā), conditions (saṃskāra) and cognitions (vijñāna).78

Joy is properly included in the aggregate of feelings (the capacity to feel pain, pleasure or neutrality towards an object with which one of the six senses has come into contact), but she is always more than just a feeling.79 One ever has a concept (saṃjñā), say, of the object about which one feels joy, just as one has an intention (cetanā) and resolution (adhimukti) towards it and a recollection (smṛti) of it. Several such mental entities (caitasikadharma), whose ground is great (mahābhūmika) and so at all times present in thought (sarvatra cetasi bhavanti),80 are namely said to be at play in the experience of joy,81 irrespective of whether her sphere is sensuality or materiality. Therefore, all of the last four mental aggregates are said to always occur in any joyful moment, related in this case by one kind of causal entity termed conjunction (saṃprayoga).82

Other non-mental entities are also said to be involved, related by another kind of co-arising cause (sahabhūhetu) termed accompaniment (anuparivarta). Certain of these classed as conditions disjoined from mind (cittaviprayuktasaṃskāra), including arising (jāti), decay (jarā), duration (sthiti) and impermanence (anityatā), are the necessary accompaniments, co-arising with all conditioned entities to occasion momentariness (Rospatt 1995, p. 40ff).83 However, certain other entities to involve acts of body and speech (kāyavākkarma), and so to be included in the aggregate of materiality, are only said to accompany joy when her sphere is materiality, when she appears on the ground (bhūmi) of absorption.84

By this notion of action (karma) and materiality (rūpa) are not intended the sorts of gestures, countenances or voices that would normally give form to the feeling of joy, as in “a leap”, “a tear” or “a cry”. These are of course not the acts to occur when in a meditative state of absorption and would for the Vaibhāṣikas be deemed vijñaptikarma, an “act which makes known” an intention (cetanā), whether it be good, bad or neutral, as all action for the Buddhists is intentional, bears a moral burden, and can, when so expressed, serve as an index of sentience (sattvākhya).85 As a kind of materiality, these acts are termed vijñaptirūpa, a “materiality which makes known”. This is classed as a derived materiality (upādāyarūpa), formed, like all material things, from the co-mingling of the four great elements (mahābhūta), earth (pṛthivī), water (ap), wind (vāyu), and fire (tejas), but with the specific function of outwardly communicating an inward mental state by a bodily shape (saṃsthāna) or lingual sound (śabda), thereby rendering it visible (sanidarśana) or obstructive (sapratigha) to the eye or the ear.86 From a causal perspective, moreover, any such act is the epiphenomenal result of what was intended (cetayitvā), is thus subsequent to the mental state (Dhammajoti 2015, pp. 421–24), and so cannot be said to co-arise with the feeling of joy as her accompaniment.

Nor, for the same reason, are certain others of those designated avijñaptikarma, “acts which do not make known” an intention. The restraint (saṃvara) required for a monk or nun to adhere to the precepts (śīla) is of this kind, involving a ritual restraint by vow (prātimokṣasaṃvara), to not kill, lie and so forth,87 whose intentions only the initial verbal commitment “makes known” and not any subsequent acts of non-doing (akaraṇa) to result from it. Being the result of a speech act, restraint was likewise considered a derived materiality, a real entity (dharma) in fact, functioning as the latent material cause whose effect ensures a monk or nun sustains their non-doing and does not break the precepts (Greene 2016b, pp. 113–21). As a kind of avijñaptirūpa, a “materiality which does not make known”, restraint however differs from other kinds in its phenomenal properties, having neither shape nor sound, being invisible (anidarśana) and unobstructive (apratigha) to the eye and the ear, and knowable only to the domain of thoughts (dharmāyatana).88

Joy is rather said to co-arise with another kind of avijñaptikarma termed restraint by absorption (dhyānasaṃvara). This too involves the same sorts of non-doing as the precepts.89 But unlike restraint of the realm of sensuality (kāmadhātusaṃvara), as the vow is otherwise named, here there is no act to be seen or heard, no outward expression that would make a mental state known. Such restraint of the realm of materiality (rūpadhātusaṃvara) is still of the domain of action and so classed as material, formed of the great elements of that realm. Yet it is a non-doing done only within absorption, springing from and remaining of the mind alone. It therefore occurs not subsequent to but concurrent with an intention, co-arising with joy as her accompaniment.90

This definition of the essence of joy serves to define all possible conditions (mental, material or otherwise) that may momentarily coincide with the feeling. However, the concern was not only with her metaphysical reality. There was also an interest in defining her actuality in a given instance of perception. Whilst we first learned that the possible spheres (avacara) of joy may be sensuality or materiality, we later read that the grounds (bhūmi) of her actual being (sadbhāva) are more precisely three:91 the realm of sensuality and the first and second absorptions.92 This limitation is itself due to the identity made between joy (muditā) and her essence, the faculty of gladness (saumanasyendriya), which was uniquely defined by the Vaibhāṣikas as the feeling of rapture (prīti) (Kuan 2005, pp. 300–2), one of several attributes (aṅga) ascribed to the first and second absorptions (dhyāna).93 Here again we observe the notion that oneself and the world are mutually constitutive of reality, such that the “ground” denotes at once a specific “level” at which joy is perceived as well as a correspondingly specific “terrain” of the cosmos where she appears. Indeed, any actual being of joy, in contrast to her essence, is entirely dependent on experience, which of course requires somebody to feel joy and something to feel joyful about.

4.2. The Joyful Yogin

As regards the condition of subjectivity, joy is said to have the realm of sensuality as her basis (kāmadhātvāśrayā). This definition corresponds precisely to those encountered in the two earlier translations of the *Vibhāṣā.94 In the latest translation, however, Xuanzang presents us with something quite different, writing that the four immeasurables are to be produced (得現起, utpatsyante)95 based on a body (身, āśraya, kāya) of the realm of sensuality.96 Whether or not his is a faithful rendering of the exemplar upon which his translation was based is unclear, and there is reason to suspect he supplies “body” as a gloss.97 Regardless of what the case may be, the sense is made all the more clear because āśraya indeed denotes the body of one born to the realm of sensuality, a human, namely, which is the corporeal condition to practise the immeasurables, as it is many other meditations.98

A distinction is therefore to be made between the body of the joyful yogin, based firmly on the ground of the realm of sensuality (kāmadhātu), and some aspects of his perception, possibly feeling joy on the grounds of the first and second absorptions of the realm of materiality (rūpadhātu). Meditation is a mental game, and so the feeling of joy in absorption fundamentally entails a departure of the mind from the body. But the phenomenology of meditative experience also involves other modes of perception, a sense of which is to be gained in further consideration of the term āśraya, which is a far more complex notion, referring not only to the individual “body” to which one is born but to the very “basis” for the total incorporation of the perceptual complex (Radich 2007, pp. 130–31).99 In the *Vibhāṣā, for example, there are said to be, in one body, six perceptual bases (āśraya), the eye (cakṣus), ear (śrotas), nose (ghrāṇa), tongue (jihvā), body (kāya) and mind (manas),100 twelve perceptual domains (āyatana), including the six bases together with their objects (ālaṃbana), sights (rūpa), sounds (śabda), smells (gandha), tastes (rasa), tangibles (spraṣṭavya) and thoughts (dharma),101 as well as eighteen perceptual elements (dhātu), including the bases, their objects and the respective cognitions (vijñāna) of a given sort of sensory event.102

Certain of these avenues of perception are however considered to be more bodily than others, more grounded in the realm of sensuality. Thus, at one point it is asked whether the body and the eighteen perceptual elements need be of the same ground (同繫, ekabhūmika) or if they may also be of another ground (異繫, anyabhūmika).103 Either may be the case, we learn, depending on the kind of perception involved. All elements, first of all, can be of the same ground, as it is simply a matter of course that one with a body of the realm of sensuality will see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think about the objects to appear on that ground, and of course be cognisant of that. In fact, all elements involved in smelling, tasting and touching are said to always be of the same ground and to therefore be limited to that of the body.104 Seeing, hearing and thinking are however quite different, as each of their elements may possibly arise on another ground. For example, one born to a body of the realm of sensuality may from the grounds of the first, second, third or fourth absorptions see or hear a sight or sound of the realm of sensuality and so on,105 the rule being that the eye or ear can only perceive their object from either the same or a higher ground, with cognition always in the first absorption.106 Thinking is still more complex, with no restrictions on where the elements of mind, thoughts, and mental cognition may occur relative to the body.107

Such distinctions in the grounds of perception are further reflected in the manners by which the senses are said to come into contact with their objects. When smelling, tasting and touching, the senses are said to reach up to (取至, prāpta) their objects (境, viṣaya), which are always proximal and molecular in size, like the morsel of flavour that touches the tongue or the trace of fragrance that wafts into the nose. But when seeing, hearing and thinking, the senses are only said to reach out to (取, *grāhaṇa) but not up to (不取至, aprāpta) their objects,108 which are distal, being either near (but not overly) or far, of varying size, and in certain cases may also bear a significance. Indeed, what foremost marks these three senses as distinct is their capacity to perceive meaning (which, if one pauses to think about it, is a quality largely attributed to the sights and sounds of the world out there). This is because it is only by the eye and the ear that one may perceive vijñapti, which, to recall, is significant insofar as it is a material act of body or speech that “makes known” an intention as well as its moral value.109

For these same reasons, a yogin is said to only see, hear and think about objects during absorption and so to likewise only produce the divine eye (divyacakṣus) and divine ear (divyaśrotra),110 not something silly like a divine nose (divyaghrāṇa).111 These two senses differ from their innate counterparts of the flesh in that they are formed of the four great elements (mahābhūta) of the realm of materiality and are the result of the resolution (adhimukti) and disposition (āśaya) of a yogin engaged in absorption (Dhammajoti 2019, pp. 142–43).112 Their purpose (amongst many other things) is to reach out to distal objects, irrespective of their size and location, whether they be of the same or another ground,113 and to do so unimpeded, penetrating earth, water, wind, fire and space to see or hear without a need to turn the body, any sight or sound, whether it be in front or behind, left or right, above or below. It is by their means, moreover, that a yogin can perceive all sentient beings in the various abodes of the cosmos,114 seeing and hearing their acts of body and speech so as to intuit their intentions and karmic destinies.115

A paradigm of perception such as this is significant because it opens up audition as a hitherto little recognised aspect of the phenomenology of meditation, with greater emphasis typically placed in scholarship on the role of vision and visualisation.116 It indeed accounts for much of the experience described in the Yogalehrbuch and its specific system of representation, which is meaningfully both visual and auditory, as we shall later observe. It would also seem rather central to the practice of joy and indeed to all the immeasurables,117 not only because the experience of joy is not limited to the ground of the body, being possibly felt (by the mind) in a state of absorption, but also because the sentient beings to whom the yogin resolves to direct the feeling are indeed something to be seen and heard, their own pains and pleasures made known by their vijñapti, representational acts which indicate their being sentient.

4.3. The Object of Joy

This brings us to the final category of the theory of practice, the object (ālaṃbana), which is defined in the Yogalehrbuch as the realm of sensuality (kāmadhātu).118 Although the *Vibhāṣā says the same (again in relation to all the immeasurables), it goes on to clarify that the object is more specifically the sentient beings of that realm, whose objectivity is notably complex:

As regards the object, one only perceives the realm of sensuality, collections (saṃghāṭa), composites (sāmagrī) and sentient beings (sattva); that is to say, one perceives sentient beings of the realm of sensuality with five aggregates or two aggregates as the object. If the thought of a sentient being is of the same ground (svabhūmika, ekabhūmika), one perceives five aggregates. If the thought of a sentient being is of another ground (anyabhūmika) or if they are without thought (acittakatva), one perceives two aggregates.119

A sentient being possesses neither essence (svabhāva) nor substantial existence (dravayasat), being but a conventional concept (prajñaptisaṃjñā) given to what is in truth a collection and composite of the five aggregates.120 When practising the immeasurables, there is hence no sentient being to whom pleasure is given, from whom displeasure is removed, who is enjoyed, nor indeed about whom one is apathetic. So imagined as the object of meditation, a sentient being is said to be the result of attention to resolution (adhimuktimanasikāra), not attention to reality (tattvamanasikāra),121 and for this reason the experience is considered a delusion (viparyāsa).122

It is, however, not the purpose of the immeasurables to analyse a sentient being into the five aggregates. Their design is rather affective, serving to remedy the affections one feels towards another, and at this level they are real enough. To practice the immeasurables is therefore to engage in a willing fiction, and it is indeed made quite clear in the *Vibhāṣā that a yogin knows the object to be unreal but grasps it anyway on the understanding that concepts (saṃjñā) have power, such that upon conceiving of another woman as “mother” one no longer feels lust (rāga) and in considering an enemy a “friend” one does not feel hate (dveṣa).123

There is nonetheless a concern, in the definition of the object above, with stipulating which of the five aggregates of a sentient being are perceived in specific instances. It is likely that this sort of analysis is to be attributed to the Vaibhāṣika contention that there is an essential reality underlying any object of perception, even ultimately unreal things, like the stuff of dreams (Cox 1988, pp. 51–52, 67).124 However, the purpose here seems to not only be a metaphysical claim. Rather, it has something to do with phenomenal appearance, with how different sorts of sentient beings are perceived within meditation.

All sentient beings of the realm of sensuality are the object of the immeasurables. To be included, therefore, are all those to dwell in that realm, whether they be among the hells, humans or the heavens, with the uppermost being the Paranirmitavaśvartin gods, each of which is said to be distinguishable by their outward forms (rūpin) and inward conceptions (saṃjñā).125 Discernible among them, we read, will be those whose thought is of the same ground (svabhūmika), those whose thought is of another ground (anyabhūmika), and those who are without thought (acittakatva). Although nowhere explained in the *Vibhāṣā, the first sort would appear to denote those without a state of absorption, whose thought is therefore of the same ground as their body. In this instance, it is said that all five aggregates are perceived, including a sentient being’s materiality as well as their feelings, conditions, conceptions and cognitions, which are in any case only made known by their material acts of body and speech. This means that the latter two sorts can only denote sentient beings engaged in absorption; a monk, for example, whose thought is of another ground, or indeed one engaged in the states of non-conception (asaṃjñāsamāpatti) and cessation (nirodhasamāpatti) who would appear to be entirely without thought, their mental state not indicated by any movement. What would be evident in such cases, it is said, are two aggregates. These should include (assuming my deductions from the *Vibhāṣā prove correct) a sentient being’s materiality and two entities included among the conditions disjoined from mind (cittaviprayuktasaṃskāra), a life faculty (jīvitendriya) and a group identity (sabhāganikāya), because these three entities together constitute an index of sentience (sattvākhya),126 being the fundamental things that distinguish the specific group (nikāya) and abode (sthiti) of the cosmos to which a sentient being belongs.127

4.4. A Practical Ontology of Joy

Having now detailed, from the perspective of the *Vibhāṣā, what lies behind the definitions of the essence (svabhāva), basis (āśraya), object (ālaṃbana) and ground (bhūmi) cited in the Yogalehrbuch, it is necessary to pause for a moment to reflect a little on its implications. Many of the details covered in the foregoing are not explicitly theorised in the text itself, and this of course begs the question as to whether the author was aware of any of it. Quite clear is that he was intimate with something of that contained in the *Vibhāṣā, for understanding the ontology he provides would prove quite impossible without recourse to the greater tapestry of knowledge offered by that work, or indeed another like it, such as the yogaśāstra(s), upon which he likely drew. On this basis, it is perhaps now possible to venture some answer as to why these four categories were chosen by the author for his theory of practice. For there is, it seems to me, one common thread to bind them all, each representing a feature on the map of oneself and the world, points on the grounds of perception and the terrains of the cosmos alike, which together serve as the parameters of practice.

For the Vaibhāṣikas, reality is to be explained, in all of its dimensions, through the paradigm of the five aggregates (skandha), such that any moment (possible or actual) is an enclosed complex of interacting entities (mental, material, causal, temporal, and so on), each with their own essence and substantial existence, which are both metaphysically independent of perception but also phenomenologically knowable (jñeya) to it. One therefore cannot readily separate oneself from the world and both have mutually inclusive roles to play in the constellation of the real—the “loop”, as Robert Sharf (2021, esp. 7–12) put it. This is true of ultimately real entities, like the feeling of joy, whose sphere may be sensuality or materiality but in a given moment comes to be perceived on a specific ground, which necessarily involves specific other entities essentially subsumable under the five aggregates. It is also true of ultimately unreal things, like the sentient beings unto whom the joyful yogin resolves to direct the feeling, whose objectivity is at once governed by the ground from and upon which they are perceived. Perception in meditation is therefore equally determined by the spheres of the entities essential to it as well as the grounds of the yogin’s body, perception, and the object he perceives. What is knowable is thus always in some manner necessarily real and in others contingently constructed, and knowing the manner in which it is would appear quite fundamental to engaging in any meditation.

These four categories are central to the ontology of immeasurable joy and seek to totally account for her experience in practice. One can only assume they served some utility, representing the conceptual cartography to aid a yogin on the path. Still, to truly ascertain the extent to which the author was oriented by these terms, we must consider the details of the practice he describes. With something of a map in hand, we may therefore now tentatively turn to the territory.

5. The Practice128

Her practice: (the yogin) is enraptured by the pleasure of a very strong friend, in the same manner for a moderate and a weak, a neutral, and in the same manner he is enraptured by the pleasure of a very strong enemy.129

Then, for he whose thought is bound fast to joy and is resolving towards sentient beings according to these kinds, a lotus pond appears in his heart, bedded with golden sand and filled with beryl-stalked golden lotuses covered with jewels. He sees sentient beings sat atop them, decorated with various ornaments, joyous. For he who has so seen the entire earth, rapture arises. As per the manner of enjoying, (he wishes), “May sentient beings be joyful!”130

Further, for he whose thought is immersed in the practice of joy, an ocean of sentient beings affected by manifold pleasures appears before him. + + + decorated like wheel-turning rulers are seen. And from his heart a golden banner arises. + + + + + + + + +, goes out from the top of his head, fills the entire world, releases a shower of various luxuries and finally a shower of jewels, with which the sentient beings do homage to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Saṃgha. In his heart, a joyful woman of golden light arises, the dominant form of joy. She encourages him, “Well done! It has begun beautifully!” In like manner, sentient beings in this world and the next are gratified with pleasure. Having seen as far as the Paranirmitavaśavartin gods, who are pleasured by pleasure, rapture arises. As per the manner of enjoying, (he wishes), “May sentient beings be joyful!”131

Afterwards, he sees sentient beings pleasured by a pleasure that is yet to come. Then, his body arises in the form of Brahma and variously arranged moon disks of golden light go out from all his apertures. He sees sentient beings sat atop them, with a like colour and encased, as if by bejewelled spired halls. Likewise, the endless world in the second absorption. In like manner, the realm is completely the colour blue.132 As per the manner of enjoying, (he wishes), “May sentient beings be joyful!”133

The practice of joy reads with a certain rhythm, comprising a series of movements occurring from one present moment to next, each punctuated by the repeated affirmation of the same joyful disposition. In so structuring the meditation, the author appears to have been guided by certain fundamental premises of his theory of practice; namely, that joy is to momentarily appear in different spheres (avacara) and so is perceived on different grounds (bhūmi): the realm of sensuality (kāmadhātu) and the first and second absorptions (dhyāna) of the realm of materiality (rūpadhātu). Only the last is named, of course, towards the end of the passage, albeit in such a way that makes clear the perception of the yogin was before on the lower two.

Beginning thus on the ground of the realm of sensuality, the yogin first sets about dividing up sentient beings into his friends, neutrals and enemies. This emulates the paradigm provided by the *Vibhāṣā, only with the omission here of a weak and middling enemy to make only five and not the expected seven kinds (prakāra). Whether this departure from the standard has any significance is hard to say, though it is somewhat unexpected, as the other immeasurables in the Yogalehrbuch name all seven.134 That aside, it is apparently with these kinds of sentient being that the yogin then proceeds, resolving towards or imagining (adhimucyamāna) them sat atop lotuses to have appeared within his heart (hṛdaya), the seat of his feelings. As a result, the feeling of rapture (prīti) arises, a sure sign the yogin is on the ground of the first absorption. Now his thought is said to be immersed in the practice of joy (muditāprayogāvahitacetas), utterly absorbed in the feeling. And with this come certain changes.

Various phenomena are now said to appear (prādurbhavati, utpadyate), which the yogin sees (paśyati) and indeed hears (though no such term occurs anywhere in the text).135 These verbs are always given in the present indicative, as if to capture the momentary unfolding of the yogin’s perception, a passive “vision”, perhaps, rather than an active “visualization”.136 No longer does the yogin perceive any particular friends, neutrals or enemies but an abstract ocean of sentient beings (satvasamudra) and eventually specific groups from across the realm of sensuality, up to the Paranirmitavaśavartin gods, as per the definition of the object (ālaṃbana) given in the theory of practice. We can assume that other groups below them may also appear, from among the hells, humans and other heavens, which are indeed named elsewhere in the text, such as in friendliness (maitrī) and compassion (karuṇā). In these passages, moreover, some sentient beings are seen to be engaged in various states of absorption, with their thought, to use the language of the *Vibhāṣā, on “another ground” or indeed “without thought”.137 Though not stated here, nor indeed anywhere in the Yogalehrbuch, the very possibility of perceiving these sentient beings is to be attributed to the divine eye and the divine ear, which, I suggest, can be assumed.138

All are described as experiencing pleasure (sukha) and joy (prāmudita) in their beautiful surroundings, kingly attire and acts of worship, having received the feelings given unto them by the yogin himself, whose own joy takes the form of a golden banner emanating from his heart and raining down various luxuries (sarvopakaraṇa) upon them. The sentient beings thus “make known” their joyful state through their indexical acts of body and speech, and indeed all the phenomena of their environs are identified with joy, serving as markers of her and thus perhaps corresponding to the aforementioned representations of pleasure (lexiang 樂相, *sukhanimitta) named in the *Vibhāṣā.

Total absorption in the feeling, however, would appear to occur upon the arising of an altogether different sort of sign, with joy herself emerging reified, personified by the figure and phonation of a woman in what is termed her dominant form (adhipatirūpa). What we are to make of this phenomenon is not obvious, for the term is entirely unique to the Yogalehrbuch, apparently denoting some kind of “form” or “materiality” (rūpa) that is in some way “dominant” (adhipati), and any attempt to get at what the author had in mind fast becomes speculation.

One can only agree with some of the first observations made by Schlingloff ([1964] 2006, p. 49), who translated adhipatirūpa as Verkörperung, an “embodiment”, which, he notes, gives appearance to abstract items of Buddhist doctrine by following their grammatical gender, such that feminine nouns appear as women and male nouns as men. The dominant form of joy thus derives from muditā herself being a feminine noun but also from the qualities identified with the feeling, for which her golden colour, feminine shape and warm words are the collective metaphor. Indeed, all the immeasurables, like many other items encountered throughout the text,139 acquire their own dominant forms, being similarly figured as women, albeit with their own colours, shapes and things to do and say.140 Such phenomena are icons, likenesses that by resemblance give shape to the qualities of the mental entities (dharma) they represent; all of which, we can now say, are more precisely drawn from a Vaibhāṣika ontology.

In this regard, the system of signification presented in the Yogalehrbuch is quite unlike other yoga manuals of the genre. As Eric Greene (2021, pp. 57–97) observes, many of the representations encountered in these works are better described as “symbols”, bearing an arbitrary relationship to the concept they signify, or indeed as “signs” insofar as they indicate the attainment of a specific state, whose significance was however often unknown to the yogin and required divination from a master.141 Ruegg (1967, p. 165) also suggested, in passing, that “attainment” is indeed the concept indicated by such “symbols” in the Yogalehrbuch, and they no doubt serve something of an indexical role, such that the dominant form of joy indeed points at the yogin having reached total absorption in the feeling. In the text, however, no divination of these signs is required because the manner in which joy (and other mental entities) is represented by them is not so arbitrary as to require explanation. The relation is rather metaphorical and so iconic, with the qualities of the feeling figured by way of visual and auditory attributes, which are related to her by analogy. In analysing the complexities of the sign “joyful woman of golden light”, one could point out that certain of its features are indeed symbolic (as gold is only a sign for joy based on the convention of the text) and that others are indexical (as the specific forms her body and speech take point at the feeling of joy), but in its totality the sign is a metaphor, such that the woman is joy; she is a personification of the feeling.

Much the same could be said of other sorts of representations termed nimitta that occur in the text, which likewise reify various entities, some mental, others not.142 Thus, the unbridled naivete, capriciousness and playfulness of thought (citta) and consciousness (vijñāna) come to be depicted as a young boy (bāladāraka) or a monkey (markata),143 and the vacuity of space (ākāśa) as the hollow of the eyes (cakṣuḥsauṣīrya) or the chest cavity (gaṇḍa).144 Between the sign and the signified there hence pertains a metaphorical equivalence, such that the quality of an entity is recognizable in the colour, shapes and sounds of what represents it, which is itself an effect of the very entity represented by it.

It is likely no accident that the author of the Yogalehrbuch uses metaphor and exhibits this overt iconic tendency, nor indeed that he assumes both vision and audition to function in the representational order of his experience. Both features perhaps derive from something rather fundamental to the representational nature of cognition, for among all the possible sorts of signifiers, icons are especially recognised as involving both vision and audition and as being predicated on the perception of some causal relation pertaining between the sign and the signified (Yelle 2016, pp. 241c42). But they can also be more specifically explicated in terms of the Vaibhāṣika ontology and phenomenology discussed in the foregoing, even though the task is an admittedly tricky affair, as the *Vibhāṣā itself offers little in the way of a theory of representation and says nothing about such specific phenomena as a dominant form. It does, however, present us with a theory of materiality or form (rūpa), which seems like a good place to start.

As already discussed, this work distinguishes sorts of materiality by causal and phenomenal properties (co-arising, invisible, obstructive, with a shape or sound, etc.). On this basis, one could say that the material qualities of the dominant form of joy at least partially coincide with those ascribed to vijñapti, for it is by the colour (varṇa), shape (saṃsthāna) and sound (śabda) of her visible (nidarśana) and obstructive (pratigha) acts of body and speech that the joyful state of the yogin is “made known”. Conversely, one could equally point out that joy is in fact “not made known” at all, apart from to the yogin alone, being but a mental image, a reflection and echo from within the chambers of his own mind, and it is therefore perhaps more akin to avijñapti, being an invisible (nidarśana) and unobstructive (pratigha) act of body and speech without any colour, shape or sound, as is normally perceived externally by the eye and ear.

Ruminations of this sort are not just my own. Certain yogins active in the middle of the first millennium also engaged with such questions, rekindling debates among the Sautrāntikas, as Vasubandhu informs us, on whether avijñapti is a real entity, as the Vaibhāṣikas claimed (Greene 2016b, pp. 122–33).145 They rather ascribed the same phenomenal properties to two other kinds of materiality that arise as the result of concentration (samādhi): the object of concentration (samādhiviṣaya), like the skeleton of the practice on impurity (aśubhaprayoga) to result from a yogin’s resolution (adhimukti),146 which they deemed to be both invisible and unobstructive,147 and another sort of pure materiality (anāsravarūpa), which is produced by pure concentration (anāsravasamādhi).148 Other wilderness dwellers (zhukongxiangzhe 住空閑者, āraṇyaka, āraṇyavasin), however, whom Saṃghabhadra cites in defense of the Vaibhāṣika position, deemed the visual objects of concentration, like those of a dream, to indeed be visible materials, formed of the great elements of the realm of materiality, and to therefore have both colour and shape, though clear and unobstructive, like the space element (ākāśadhātu),149 and perceived not by the eye but by the mind.150 Pure materiality, he writes, is nothing other than avijñapti, which has neither colour nor shape, is invisible and unobstructive, and co-arises with pure concentration.151

Broad consensus thus existed amongst yogins and scholiasts alike regarding the material reality of the objects of meditation, with divergences only in what phenomenal properties qualified them. One cannot readily say to which (if any) of these descriptions the author of the Yogalehrbuch would have adhered. His predilection for Vaibhāṣika thought would lead one to suppose that he may have followed something akin to the phenomenology described by Saṃghabhadra, who ostensibly attributes the same material properties to many of the visual (albeit not the auditory) objects of meditation.152 Still, none of the above would quite account for the notion of dominant form, which was clearly considered by the author of the Yogalehrbuch to be a distinct sort of materiality, qualified, namely, by its being dominant.

Some explanation for this idea, as Schlingloff ([1964] 2006, p. 49fn2) tentatively suggested, can perhaps be sought in early works of Abhidharma (c. first century), wherein it is said that for a practitioner to achieve concentration (samādhi) and one-pointedness of mind (cittaikāgratā), he is to first make dominant (adhipatiṃ kṛtvā) the four bases of supernormal powers (ṛddhipāda), zeal (chanda), thought (citta), effort (vīrya) and analysis (mīmāṃsā), these being the foundations for the power (ṛddhi) to work various wonders, such as magical creations (nirmāṇa).153

This idea was apparently quite widespread and is later taken up in the Yogācārabhūmi of Asaṅga (c. fourth century), an early work of the Yogācāra school, where dominance and representation in meditation are more closely theorised. Thus, in one section of the work, the Śrāvakabhūmi, a yogin is said to first make dominant (adhipatiṃ kṛtvā) some knowable thing (jñeya vastu), a real entity (dharma), such as friendliness (maitrī),154 which he has previously seen, heard, or thought. On the ground of concentration (samāhitabhūmika), he attends to (manasikaroti), imagines (vikalpayati) and resolves towards (adhimucyate) that entity, which initially results not in the arising of the thing itself but a representation (nimitta), resemblance (pratirūpaka) and appearance (pratibhāsa) that shares some identity (sabhāga) with it.155 In practising friendliness, for instance, a yogin is to first make dominant a thing in which friendliness has dominance (maitryadhipateya) and with a disposition towards the welfare and pleasure (hitasukhādhyāśayagatasya) of other sentient beings, is to imagine providing all with pleasure, whether they be a friend, neutral or enemy, grasping representations of their form (rūpanimitta), colour and shape (varṇasthānanimitta) and what they make known (vijñaptinimitta).156 This sort of representation was not regarded as real, being but a mental image (Schmithausen 1976, pp. 239–40). However, when the resolution of the yogin has become pure (pariviśuddha) and totally clarified (paryāvadāta), direct perception (pratyakṣa) of the thing itself is then said to be realised, with material entities now arising like magical creations (nirmāṇasadṛśa) and immaterial entities also acquiring appearance in accordance with the thing that has dominance (adhipateya).157 The same distinction is likewise made in another section of the work, the Viniścayasaṃgrahaṇi, with this latter sort of materiality specifically deemed to have substantial existence (dravyasat), a sort of object (viṣaya) that takes on an extremely clear (suviśuddhi) appearance (ābhāsa), like a magical creation (nirmitavat), which is only visible due to dominance.158

For the Yogācāra, then, the sorts of objects to arise as a result of dominance have a representational value, specifically involve both vision and audition, as is made clear in the representation of vijñapti, and have qualities governed by the very dominant entities they represent. Their relationship, in other words, is not arbitrary but determined by a necessary relationship of identity.

Nothing of this sort is to be found in the *Vibhāṣā, although it upholds not entirely dissimilar premises. For them, as we saw above, the objects of meditation to result from the resolution (adhimukti) of a yogin, like a skeleton or a sentient being, are delusions (viparyāsa) and are not in their appearance ultimately real. Being metaphysical realists, however, the Vaibhāṣikas affirmed that such objects are eventually reducible to an underlying entity, whether that be the five aggregates, as in the case of a sentient being, or indeed to some materiality, to the extent that such meditation objects have a colour, shape or sound. Moreover, this text also speaks of magical creations (nirmāṇa), which are said to arise from a yogin in absorption, who, through mastery (vaśitā) of the supernormal powers (ṛddhi), has become a magician (nirmātṛ), fabricating out of the great elements of a given realm one body or more, be it of himself or another, with the purpose of materialising his vijñapti, thereby “making known” his intention through the acts of body and speech of this created icon, such that it is seen and heard. Notably, from a causal perspective, these creations are termed the accompaniment of a single thought (一心隨轉, *ekacittānuparivartin) and are therefore understood to co-arise with the mind that creates them.159

This latter causal condition is elsewhere applied to specific sorts of avijñapti, like restraint by absorption or pure restraint, as we have seen, which are said to co-arise with a mental entity, like the feeling of joy, as an accompaniment (anuparivartaka). As regards both its causal and phenomenal attributes, the dominant form of joy therefore starts to look an awful lot like a magical appearance. Consequently, one can only wonder if the author of the Yogalehrbuch took a specific interpretation of the definition of the essence of joy from the theory of practice he cites, understanding that when the sphere of joy is materiality, on the ground of absorption, her appearance involves all five aggregates, including accompanying materiality, such that she comes to be reified in a material form, a dominant form, with acts of body and speech, just “like” a magical creation.

From the perspective of the *Vibhāṣā, this would not be the only kind of distinct materiality to arise from absorption, with several other physical changes said to occur to the body of the yogin. We have already seen that the divine eye and the divine ear are formed thus, resulting from the resolution and disposition of the yogin which give rise to the elements of the realm of materiality that make up these senses.160 But the text also names several points on the body, such as the heart, upon which a yogin is to focus in his practice, as the places where the great elements of the realm of materiality initially form to eventually permeate the entire body and effect various changes.161

Again, the author of the Yogalehrbuch was conceivably influenced by these notions, for the body (āśraya) of the yogin throughout the text undergoes several transformations. In the passage above, we saw that his heart (hṛdaya), when on the ground of absorption, becomes the very source from which the entire knowable (jñeya) cosmos emanates. Furthermore, his entire body is said to assume the form of Brahma, which is a representation of the meritorious result of practising the immeasurables, leading to rebirth in the Brahma heavens, the lowest of the realm of materiality, but is in the Vibhāṣā regarded as the embodiment of the very state it represents.162 Other such total transformations of the body were widely recognised as resulting from the immeasurables. Canonical scripture affirms that friendliness produces a body that neither blade nor poison can penetrate (Schlingloff [1964] 2006, p. 118), an effect which the *Vibhāṣā attributes to all of the immeasurables, with the great elements of the realm of materiality permeating the body and causing it to be hard like stone.163 As per his tendency to reify canonical metaphor, the author of Yogalehrbuch adopts this very simile and turns it into a vision of its own, such that the body of the yogin becomes adamantine (vajramaya).164

The Vaibhāṣikas thus understood there to be various material effects of absorption, presuming an underlying material reality to all of the subjective and objective changes that may occur. Counting the author of the Yogalehrbuch among them, it would seem likely that he similarly understood that all such phenomena to result from absorption in joy—the sentient beings unto whom the feeling of joy is given, her dominant form, or indeed the very body of the joyful yogin whence they emanate—are all at once representations and materialisations of the mental state of the yogin engaged in absorption, with their phenomenal properties, their colour, shape and sound and their being seen and heard, necessarily determined by the very state they “make known” (vijñapti). All visual and auditory appearances to result from the joyful mind in meditation are therefore related to the feeling both iconically in quality and indexically in referentiality, much indeed like “a leap”, “a tear” or “a cry”. This would be the Vaibhāṣika theory of representation.

6. Conclusions

Stated in the opening words of this paper was the purpose of considering the conversation that occurred between the author of the Yogalehrbuch and the *Vibhāṣā. Certainly, there are good grounds to have pursued this line, because their relationship is undeniable, as this paper has shown, and having now established their affinity more needs to be done in juxtaposing the two works. The foregoing attempt to view the text in Vaibhāṣika terms was thus a first step but an essential one, aiming to clarify several elements of the text by properly placing it in its own philosophical tradition. Along the way, however, many issues arose, and both the magnitude and limitations of the enterprise were quickly realised, with the last reading of the section to describe the practice of joy in particular riddled with speculation, perhaps even uncomfortably so. Such discomfort (presuming it is not only my own) itself says a lot, reflecting something of the texts themselves, as there is not always a clear line to be drawn between any theory and practice of yoga. Out of this endeavour, several important points have nonetheless emerged, pertaining to both the history of the text and the premises upon which the author relied in composing it.

It is in both regards highly significant that the theory of practice (prayoganirdeśa) the author provides in the preface to the practice (prayoga) of joy and the other immeasurables is a citation of some version of the *Vibhāṣā. Of equal import is that he did not know any of the three Chinese translations available today, which all differ in their details, at once revealing the variegated nature of the Vaibhāṣika tradition itself and indeed the problems its members had in providing a final taxonomy of yoga. Rather more likely, it was suggested, is that he relied on the elusive yogaśāstra(s) he cites, which reflects yet another version of the *Vibhāṣā probably current in Central Asia in the seventh century. In this regard, it is no doubt significant that certain elements of the ontology of the immeasurables the author knew are not found in the two earlier translations of the *Vibhāṣā but in the latest alone, which was made by Xuanzang around this time. This specific version is quite distinct for its tendency to incorporate the views contained in the other two witnesses, as it does the opinions of various scholiasts and yogins current at the time of its composition (or translation), at times denying their views and at others presenting them as alternatives to its own affirmed stance. Seeing as the Yogalehrbuch presents some of these other views recorded in this translation alone and that some of these moreover coincide with those stated in the Nyāyānusāra, versions of which were also available in Central Asia in the seventh century, we can therefore conclude that the work reflects later developments to have occurred to Vaibhāṣika thought, perhaps after the fifth century, when Buddhavarman’s second translation of the *Vibhāṣā was made. What we have in the Yogalehrbuch is therefore one yogin’s interpretation of one theory of yoga elaborated in one yogaśāstra, which was likely reliant on one later version of the *Vibhāṣā.

The author’s interpretation of this theory, as provided by his description of the practice (prayoga) of joy, was shown to exhibit several continuities with the *Vibhāṣā. This is true not only as regards the ontology he reproduces in the preface, after which his practice was demonstrably oriented, particularly in its subjective and objective dimensions. It is also the case for the broader metaphysical realism and phenomenology of meditation proposed by Vaibhāṣikas with which he appears to have operated and indeed instantiated in the practice he describes.165

It was suggested that the premises of Vaibhāṣika realism had implications for the text’s system of representation, whereby the appearance of the various sights and sounds are all the result of the yogin’s resolution (adhimukti), are coloured by his imagination and joyful disposition, emerging as the very expressions of his mental state. They are therefore not arbitrary symbols, with no obvious resemblance to the feeling they signify, but are all icons, metaphors identified with her. Such phenomena as the dominant form of joy are materialisations, visible and auditory objects that by their colour, shape and sound signify the very qualities of the entity signified. That such representations are specifically “seen” and “heard” is due to the paradigm of perception given in the *Vibhāṣā, which affirms these two modes of cognition as the sole avenues available in absorption, for it is they alone that have the capacity to perceive meaning, with sights and sounds, like acts of body and speech, able to communicate, to “make known” a mental state. Experience in yoga, for the Vaibhāṣikas, is inextricably tied to vijñapti, a premise that may indeed have bearing on the later development of the Yogācāra tradition (Dhammajoti 2019, p. 164). The author of the Yogalehrbuch thus quite obviously relies on the sort of theory provided in the *Vibhāṣā, assuming the principles of its realism and phenomenology to develop a system of representation that instantiates its ontology in the practice of yoga.

These observations notwithstanding, one must admit that much still remains unclear about the Yogalehrbuch and about the nature of its author’s conversation with the *Vibhāṣā. Many features of the practice he describes, which are potentially to be explained as an interpretation of the theory of practice, do not find precise explanations in that work, nor explicitly in any other. We therefore do not know the exact map the author of the Yogalehrbuch had to hand, and it would seem that he often strayed off the one we do have before us, as indeed he only could, for the chaotic fancies of the mind cannot be fully ordered, as the Vibhāṣā seeks but ultimately fails to achieve, especially when it comes to matters of yoga.