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T1586 · VERSE 10 OF 30 · LAYER 3: SENSES

Universal and specific factors

First, the universals (sarvatraga): contact and the rest. Next, the object-specific (viniyata): desire (chanda), conviction (adhimokṣa), retention (smṛti), concentration (samādhi), discernment (prajñā) — the objects they take are not the same.

ādyāḥ sparśādayaś chandādhimokṣasmṛtayaḥ saha | samādhidhībhyāṃ niyatāḥ śraddhātha hrīr apatrapā || 10 ||

初遍行觸等　次別境謂欲 勝解念定慧　所緣事不同

Triṃśikā, verse 10 · from Xuanzang's Chinese · tr. Claude (Anthropic), 2026

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.

Apparatus — five witnesses

DSE

The Distributed Systems Engineer

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
  • conviction (adhimokṣa): commitment to a content
  • retention (smṛti): keeping a content present over time
  • concentration (samādhi): one-pointedness
  • discernment (prajñā): telling similar contents apart

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

Draft not yet reviewed
CYN

The Cynefin Practitioner

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, conviction, retention, concentration, discernment. These can be cultivated; the universals cannot.

Draft not yet reviewed
COG

The Cognitive Scientist

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

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

  1. Contact (sparśa): afferent input.
  2. Attention (manaskāra): selection / salience.
  3. Sensation (vedanā): hedonic and somatic tagging.
  4. Perception (saṃjñā): categorization.
  5. 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.

Draft not yet reviewed
PRO

The Process Philosopher

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.

Draft not yet reviewed
SKP

The Skeptic

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”; this site’s “retention” deliberately takes the memory side, against the meditation-culture default. The English translation choice matters more than it looks.

Draft not yet reviewed