Verse 10 of 30 Layer 3: Senses

Universal and specific factors

初遍行觸等　次別境謂欲勝解念定慧　所緣事不同

First, the universals (sarvatraga): contact and the rest. Next, the object-specific (viniyata): desire (chanda), resolve (adhimokṣa), mindfulness, concentration, wisdom — each engaging a different objective basis.

The five universals (sarvatraga) are present in every cognitive moment. The five object-specifics (viniyata) only show up in particular operations. Reading them together gives a precise picture of what Vasubandhu thinks any single moment of cognition is made of, and what additional cognitive resources can be brought to bear when conditions invite them.

filter_alt Five Lenses

memory

The Distributed Systems Engineer

DSE

Treats alaya as an append-only log, manas as a hot cache, the six senses as consumers.

The universals are the minimum runtime: every moment of cognition runs the five-step pipeline of contact → attention → sensation → perception → volition. There is no cognition without this loop; it is the main() of an experiential tick.

The object-specifics are conditional modules:

desire (chanda): engagement, interest
resolve (adhimokṣa): commitment to a content
mindfulness (smṛti): retention of a content over time
concentration (samādhi): one-pointedness
wisdom (prajñā): discernment between similar contents

Each loads only when needed. Yogācāra’s separation of universal from object-specific is exactly what a thoughtful runtime designer would do.

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hub

The Cynefin Practitioner

CYN

Maps each verse to Clear, Complicated, Complex, Chaotic, or Confused.

The five universals describe a sense-making loop: encounter, orient, feel, interpret, act. This is the basic Cynefin operating cycle (probe-sense-respond, observe-orient-decide-act). Vasubandhu spelled it out in five steps in the 4th century.

The five object-specifics are the higher cognitive controls that Cynefin literature would call “deliberate practice”: desire, resolve, mindfulness, concentration, wisdom. These can be cultivated; the universals cannot.

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psychology

The Cognitive Scientist

COG

Reads through predictive processing, Bayesian inference, and self-model theory.

The universals are an excellent description of the perceptual-motor cycle:

Contact (sparśa): afferent input.
Attention (manaskāra): selection / salience.
Sensation (vedanā): hedonic and somatic tagging.
Perception (saṃjñā): categorization.
Volition (cetanā): output to behavior.

This is essentially the standard contemporary model. The object-specifics map to executive functions: motivation (chanda), goal-locking (adhimokṣa), working memory (smṛti), sustained attention (samādhi), discrimination (prajñā).

Yogācāra was doing cognitive psychology.

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water_drop

The Process Philosopher

PRO

Whitehead, Heraclitus, Bergson — reality as flow, not substance.

The five universals form a single occasion, not five sequential operations. Whitehead would call them aspects of one concrescence. Reading them as a pipeline is useful for analysis but obscures their simultaneity in any actual moment.

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report_problem

The Skeptic

SKP

Mandatory on every verse. Names where the metaphors break.

Don’t take “always present” too literally. Some Yogācāra sub-schools dispute which factors are truly universal. The list is a high-confidence default, not an axiomatic foundation. Smṛti in particular shades between “memory” and “mindfulness”; the English translation choice matters more than it looks.

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filter_alt Five Lenses