When most contemporary readers hear the word *物* (vastu), they think of "objects" — the stuff on the desk, the things in the closet, perhaps even "matter" in a physics sense. But the Buddhist classical corpus uses *物* in at least six distinct but interlocking ways, and flattening them into "things" loses precisely what the tradition is trying to teach. *物* is not one concept. It is a family of overlapping questions about what shows up to us, what we grasp at, what we live by, and what we ultimately cannot possess.
This essay walks through those questions in turn, then takes them into a commute, a phone, a workplace, a relationship, a meditation cushion. It finishes with the misreadings that most often get in the way.
一、这个概念在说什么
The Buddhist corpus treats *物* in registers that are remarkably different from one another. The Āgama literature (early sutras) speaks about *物* almost entirely as worldly property. The Yogācāra literature doesn't use the word *物* at all but builds an elaborate analysis of "what can be known." The Madhyamaka literature uses *物* as a precise philosophical target — "that which has properties." The Śata-śāstra (Treatise of One Hundred Treatises) treats *物* as the everyday things in a fourfold causation argument. And Chan literature takes *物* as something to be probed, not defined. We need to walk through each strand, because each adds a layer that the others do not.
1.1 *物* as worldly goods: the Āgama strand
The *Saṃyuktāgama* (《雜阿含經》) speaks of *物* in the most grounded, almost managerial sense: the things a person owns, depends on, and lives by. It enumerates them with care — "財物真金寶，象馬莊嚴具，奴僕諸僮使，及諸田宅等" ("gold, gems, elephants, horses, ornaments, servants, fields, and houses") — and then delivers the existential point: at the end of life, "一切皆遺棄，裸神獨遊往" ("all is left behind, and one goes forth naked"). Even the people we own (servants, dependents) are counted among *物*. This is not a metaphor. It is an inventory of what humans actually cling to.
The same text then gives a strikingly practical teaching — the "four-part division of property" (四分財法): "始學功巧業，方便集財物，當應作四分，一分自食用，二分營生業，餘一分藏密，以擬於貧乏" ("first learn a skill, gather property by appropriate means, then divide it into four parts: one part for one's own consumption, two parts for conducting business, one part stored away to meet future want"). It lists six kinds of livelihood (六種資生具) — farming, trade, animal husbandry, real estate, building, and the like. It distinguishes persons into whom one may entrust one's *物* and persons into whom one may not (the fool, the cheat, the miser, the distant relative). This is a sophisticated ethical framework for how *物* should be earned, divided, and stewarded.
What this strand contributes to the concept is the **ethical and existential face of *物***: *物* as what one lives by, what one is responsible for, and what one cannot ultimately take with oneself.
1.2 *物* as object of cognition: the Yogācāra strand
The *Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra* (《瑜伽師地論》) does not use the word *物* directly. Instead, it speaks of *所知境界* ("the domain of what can be known") — that is, anything and everything that can show up as the object of cognition. It analyzes this domain as having two aspects: *文* (the words/text that convey) and *義* (the meaning that is conveyed). "文是所依，義是能依。如是二種，總名一切所知境界" ("Words are the basis, meaning is what rests on the basis. These two together are called 'all that can be known'").
It also uses *事* ("matter/case/affair") as a classificatory category, listed alongside other analytical terms — *依處* (basis), *自性* (own-nature), *相應* (correspondence), *世俗* (conventional), *差別* (distinction), *德失* (virtue and fault), *能所治* (what cures what) — to dissect *物* from multiple sides. The point is that *物*, when taken as object-of-cognition, is not a simple chunk of stuff. It is an articulated structure with a basis (文) and what rests on it (義), and it can be analyzed in terms of its own-nature, its conventional usage, its distinctions, its ethical character, and so on.
What this strand contributes is the **epistemological face of *物***: *物* is whatever can be known, and the Yogācāra tradition insists that this is not a flat list of objects but a layered, analyzable structure.
1.3 *物* as mutually conditioned with mind: the Mahāyāna-sūtra-ālaṃkāra strand
The *Mahāyāna-sūtra-ālaṃkāra* (《大乘莊嚴經論》) brings *物* into the most philosophically loaded relationship: with *心* (mind). "心外無有物，物無心亦無" ("Outside of mind there is no *物*; without *物*, mind too is not"). Neither *心* nor *物* can be fixed as an independent substance; each is constituted only in relation to the other.
The same text uses *事* ("matter") for the phenomenal appearance of *物*, declaring "彼事無體" ("that matter has no underlying substance"). It uses the example of illusion: "是事彼處有，彼有體亦無" ("This matter appears there, but it has no substance there") — the appearance happens, but no underlying thing is to be grasped. It places *物* as one of five bases of practice (alongside *思* — intention, and *心* — mind), and in the four "seeking" categories, it pairs *名* (name) with *物* as mutually conditioned: "名物互為客，二性俱是假" ("Name and *物* are each other's guests; both natures are provisional; neither can be independently obtained").
What this strand contributes is the **ontological-relational face of *物***: *物* does not exist as a self-standing entity; it arises only in dependence on mind, on naming, on relational context. Its appearance is undeniable; its fixed essence is not.
1.4 *物* as the bearer of properties: the Madhyamaka strand
Nāgārjuna's *Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā* (《中論》) uses *物* with surgical precision. It defines *物* as that which has properties — *相* are the properties, and *物* is the *可相*, "that which can have properties." Then it argues: if there are no inherent properties, then there is no inherent bearer of properties; "是故今無相，亦無有可相；離相可相已，更亦無有物" ("Therefore there is now no property, nor any property-bearer; apart from property and property-bearer, there is also no *物* to be obtained").
It then extends this to time: time is said to depend on *物* ("因物故有時"), but since *物* has no own-being, time too has none ("物尚無所有，何況當有時" — "If even *物* has no being, how could time have any?").
It also stages a debate: an interlocutor says "人" (person) and "法" (phenomena, the ear-eye-pleasures-pains) are mutually established, each entailing the other. The *Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā* uses this exchange as a setting for the same dismantling — the person-as-substance and the phenomena-as-properties are both *物* in different guises.
What this strand contributes is the **logical face of *物***: *物* is the hidden metaphysical assumption beneath property-talk, time-talk, and person-talk; the analysis is meant to make this assumption visible and then show it cannot hold.
1.5 *物* in fourfold negation: the Śata-śāstra strand
Āryadeva's *Śata-śāstra* (《百論》) takes *物* in a more everyday mode and folds it into a fourfold causal argument: "物物非物，非物互不生" — "*物* does not produce *物*; *非物* does not produce *非物*; *物* does not produce *非物*; *非物* does not produce *物*." Each branch is then examined with examples: mother producing son (the son was already there when "produced"); the transformation from youth to age (not a production, but a change); the image in the mirror (no coming-from-anywhere); the rabbit's horn as a *非物* example.
What is striking is that *物* here is concrete: bottle, cloth, thread, milk, butter, mirror, face. Not an abstract metaphysical category but the things of daily commerce. The teaching uses the things you can see and handle in order to dissolve your attachment to the metaphysics of causation.
What this strand contributes is the **everyday-thingly face of *物***: the philosophical work is done not by retreating from the world but by looking at ordinary objects more carefully than we normally do.
1.6 *物* as the object of investigation: the Chan strand
The Chan records (語錄) of Wenyi (文益) and Dahui (大慧) do not define *物*. They use it. Wenyi's *Qingliang Yuan Lu* (《金陵清涼院文益禪師語錄》) lists the things students may grasp at: "執著理。執著事。執著色。執著空" — grasping principle, grasping matter, grasping form, grasping emptiness. Each is shown to be just another object of attachment. Wenyi then uses a peony in front of him: "髮從今日白，花是去年紅。豔冶隨朝露，馨香逐晚風。何須待零落，然後始知空" — "Today's white hair, yesterday's red flower; beauty follows the morning dew, fragrance goes with the evening wind. Why wait for things to fall before knowing emptiness?" *物* here is the peony, the hair, the dew — but also the emptiness that is already present in them.
Dahui (《大慧普覺禪師語錄》) repeatedly uses the formula attributed to Nanquan Puyuan: "不是心，不是佛，不是物" — "Not mind, not Buddha, not *物*." This is offered as a koan, a probe, not a definition. *物* here is whatever you might fix on as the third term of subject-object. Dahui also quotes "佛真法身猶若虛空，應物現形如水中月" — "The Buddha's true dharma-body is like empty space, appearing in response to *物* like the moon in water" — where *物* is the sentient being, the audience, the situation that calls forth a response. He also uses *萬象* ("ten-thousand phenomena") and *一塵* ("one dust-mote") as alternate names for *物*.
What this strand contributes is the **contemplative face of *物***: *物* is whatever shows up to you, and the practice is neither to deny it nor to grasp it, but to look straight at the assumption that you need to do either.
1.7 What holds these together
Reading across the six strands, *物* turns out to be a conceptual family rather than a single idea:
- As livelihood: what one owns and depends on (Āgama) - As object-of-cognition: what can be known, in its articulated structure (Yogācāra) - As relational phenomenon: what appears only in dependence on mind and naming (Mahāyāna-sūtra-ālaṃkāra) - As bearer-of-properties: what is assumed when we talk about things having qualities (Madhyamaka) - As everyday concrete thing: the bottle, the cloth, the mirror (Śata-śāstra) - As object of investigation: whatever you might fix on and mistake for the answer (Chan)
What unites them is a single structural claim: in every register — economic, epistemological, ontological, logical, contemplative — *物* shows up as something that appears to have a self-standing nature but, on closer inspection, cannot be held onto in that way. The tradition does not deny that *物* appears. It insists that *物*, in any of its senses, is not what it initially seems to be.
This is the structural position of *物* in the Buddhist path of liberation: it is the *most basic thing the practitioner must learn to see through* — not by destroying it, but by understanding how it functions. The dissolution of the assumption of *物*-as-self-standing-substance is, in a sense, the precondition for the dissolution of the assumption of *self*.
二、生活里的走查
Let us walk through several contemporary scenes, mapping each classical strand carefully onto what actually happens, and pointing out where modern intuitions typically mis-map the concept.
2.1 Morning commute — the *物* in your bag
You leave the house with a bag. Inside are keys, a wallet, a phone, a water bottle, perhaps a book, perhaps medication. Each of these is *物* in the Āgama sense — what you own, what you depend on, what you cannot (legitimately) leave unattended to a stranger. The Āgama instruction about who can be entrusted with *物* maps directly onto modern questions: who do you lend your keys to? Who do you share a password with? Who do you let into your apartment when you travel? The fourfold division of property (one for living, two for reinvestment, one for reserves) is also not archaic. If you think of your monthly income rather than your ancient grain stores, the same ratio asks: how much do you actually live on, how much do you invest in producing more, how much do you reserve against illness or unemployment, and how much (if any) do you simply consume?
But here is the mis-mapping. Modern readers often hear "Buddhism says *物* is impermanent, so don't attach to things" and translate this into "use less stuff." The Āgama strand does not say that. It says *物* is unavoidably part of life, must be earned and used responsibly, and — only at the threshold of death — cannot be carried. The instruction is not ascetic withdrawal but ethical use. Modern "minimalism" can be just another form of attachment (to the identity of "person who has fewer things").
2.2 The phone screen — *物* as object of cognition
You unlock the phone. A stream of images, headlines, short videos, and notifications appears. Each item on that screen is *物* in the Yogācāra sense: a *所知境界*, a known object, structured by *文* (the words, the layout, the design) and *義* (the meaning conveyed, the emotional impact, the call to action). Each item has its *自性* (apparent own-nature — "this is a news story," "this is a friend's photo"), its *世俗* (its conventional function in the social world), its *德失* (its moral valence, real or manufactured).
You scroll. Each thing that catches your eye is also *物* in the Chan sense — whatever you fix on, you immediately form a small subject-object split with: "I am seeing this." Each tap is a micro-act of grasping. Each scroll-past is a micro-act of release. Each notification that pulls you back is *物* in the sense of "the audience that calls forth a response" — the moon-in-water image from Dahui's citation of the sutra: "應物現形如水中月."
But here is the mis-mapping. It is tempting to think of digital content as "not really *物*" because it is "only" virtual. The Buddhist analysis does not allow this escape. Whether something is digital, material, or imagined does not change its status as *物* — *物* is precisely whatever shows up as known. Imagined objects are still objects-of-cognition. The Mahāyāna-sūtra-ālaṃkāra point about mind and *物* being mutually conditioned applies fully here: the feed exists as the feed only because your attention, your preferences, your algorithms (which are extensions of prior attention) co-produce it.
2.3 Work — the fourfold division, the six livelihoods
Your job is your livelihood. The Āgama's six kinds of livelihood (farming, trade, animal husbandry, real estate, building, and the like) are not six kinds; they are a representative list. The point is that *物* is produced and maintained through *工巧業* — through skill, craft, appropriate means. The fourfold division then asks: of the *物* your labor produces, how is it distributed across self-care, reinvestment, reserves, and (implicitly) generosity to those in need?
Modern readers often mis-map "the fourfold division" as "personal finance advice." It is not just that. It is an ethical structure that presumes *物* is real, must be honestly gotten, must be responsibly used, and that one's relationship to *物* is itself part of one's spiritual practice. The Āgama does not say "give it all away." It says "earn it properly and divide it properly."
The mis-mapping to avoid here: do not read this as "the Buddhist view of work." It is the Buddhist view of *物-as-means-of-life*. Work is the channel through which *物* enters your life; the question is what you do with it once it does.
2.4 Trusting someone with your vulnerability
You decide to tell a friend something difficult — about a relationship, a fear, a failure. In the Āgama's language, you are deciding whether to entrust your *物* (in a broader sense: what is precious and private to you) to a particular person. The Āgama explicitly distinguishes who can be entrusted with *物* and who cannot: not the fool, not the cheat, not the miser, not the distant acquaintance; but the accomplished friend, the trustworthy one, the kin of shared breath.
This mapping is unusually direct. Modern relationships frequently fail not because of any single wrong act but because *物* (in the broader sense of confidences, vulnerabilities, shared futures) has been entrusted to someone who cannot hold it. The classical teaching is not about emotional coldness but about discernment in trust. You are not being asked to distrust everyone; you are being asked to know what you are handing over and to whom.
The mis-mapping to avoid here: do not turn this into "don't open up." The Āgama explicitly encourages *giving* (each according to their due), and the same trust-discernment applies in the other direction — knowing when it is appropriate to entrust your *物* and when it is not.
2.5 Losing what you cannot replace
The phone call comes. Someone has died, or is leaving, or something has been taken. You look around and realize that nothing you can buy or hold will substitute. This is the moment the *Saṃyuktāgama* describes: "一切皆遺棄，裸神獨遊往" — at the end, all is left behind.
Modern readers frequently mis-map this as "Buddhism says everything is sad and pointless." That is not the point. The point is that the *物* you have been building your life around is exactly the *物* that cannot go with you. The teaching is not that *物* is unreal (the Āgama strand has no interest in that — it just told you how to manage your property four ways). The teaching is that *your* ultimate identification with *物* is misplaced. This is also where the *Mahāyāna-sūtra-ālaṃkāra*'s relational point becomes existential: the person who lost the *物* and the *物* that was lost were always only constituted together. The grief is real, and so is the appearance of the *物*, but the assumption that the *物* was a self-standing substance that *you* possessed is what is being gently ungrounded.
The mis-mapping to avoid here: do not read the classical line as "Buddhism devalues relationships." It devalues the assumption that relationships can be possessed.
2.6 Sitting in meditation — and the koan
You sit down to meditate. A thought arises. You watch it. You notice that you have already formed a small subject-object structure: there is "you" (the watcher) and "it" (the thought). The Chan record's "不是心，不是佛，不是物" lands here as something more than clever words. *心* — the watcher — is the first thing assumed. *佛* — what the watcher might be trying to become — is the second. *物* — the watched — is the third. The instruction is not to deny any of these but to see that none of them can be held as a fixed self-standing term.
You return to the breath. The breath, the air, the body, the room — each is *物* in the Yogācāra sense (an object of cognition). Each, in the Chan sense, is also a potential point of fixation. The peony in Wenyi's poem and the dust-mote in Dahui's quote ("觀法界於一塵之中，見一塵遍法界之內" — "Contemplate the dharma-realm within one mote of dust; see one mote of dust pervading the dharma-realm") are not metaphors to be understood intellectually. They are reminders that the present thing-in-front-of-you is not a small isolated object but a node in an unbounded whole.
The mis-mapping to avoid here: do not turn Chan practice into "concentration on objects." Wenyi's whole move is to defuse the *color/empty*, *principle/matter*, *form/emptiness* dichotomies. The peony is not an object of concentration; it is an occasion for seeing how things already appear.
三、当代人为什么需要它
Why does any of this matter now? Several reasons.
3.1 The object-saturated present
Contemporary life is the most *物*-dense environment humans have ever inhabited. A person in a major city encounters more distinct objects, images, products, notifications, and signs in a single day than a medieval villager encountered in a year. The Āgama's inventory of "gold, gems, elephants, horses, ornaments, servants, fields, houses" sounds almost quaint next to a single smartphone screen. The Mahāyāna-sūtra-ālaṃkāra's "心外無有物，物無心亦無" lands with a different force when the objects outside mind have multiplied by orders of magnitude. The instruction that *物* and *心* cannot be cleanly separated is not abstract philosophy; it is a description of a real situation in which every object is also a mental construction, and every mental state is also objectified.
The danger is not "too many objects" in some material sense; it is that the mind takes the *appearance* of self-standing objects as confirmation that the objects are self-standing. The Chan record's "not mind, not Buddha, not *物*" is exactly the antidote: the more saturated the field of *物*, the more important the practice of seeing through the assumption that *物* has a self-standing nature.
3.2 The illusion of substance in modern physics and neuroscience
Some readers will recognize in the Buddhist analysis of *物* an echo of twentieth- and twenty-first-century physics: the discovery that what we call "objects" are not solid, not ultimately individuated, not independent of observation. Neuroscience likewise has documented the brain's active construction of what appears to be a stable external world. Cognitive science has produced extensive literature on predictive processing — the view that perception is not the brain passively receiving *物* but actively generating it.
It is tempting to say, "Science has proven Buddhism right about *物*." This would be overreach. What one can responsibly say is that several modern scientific frameworks have moved closer to the structural position the Buddhist analysis of *物* always occupied: that what appears as a self-standing object is in fact a relational, processual, observer-conditioned appearance. But the scientific accounts have not (and may never) reach the specific philosophical claims the Buddhist texts make — about the absence of inherent existence in *物*, about the mutual conditioning of mind and *物*, about the fourfold negation of causation in *物*. They suggest parallel structural intuitions; they do not confirm them. And the scientific accounts themselves remain contested within their own fields. The honest position is: *物* in the Buddhist sense is structurally adjacent to certain contemporary intuitions about objects, but the analogy is not identity, and the Buddhist claim goes further.
3.3 Work, livelihood, and the anxiety of provision
The Āgama's fourfold division of property and six kinds of livelihood address an existential anxiety that is not historical. Modern economies are more abstracted, but the underlying question is the same: how is *物* (the means of life) earned, divided, and held? The classical answer — earned by skill, divided responsibly, entrusted wisely, and not ultimately possessed — is not a different answer from the modern financial-planning literature; it is the same answer with different vocabulary and an explicit acknowledgment that the final letting-go is built into the structure.
3.4 The problem of "self" in everyday life
The most important reason to engage the Buddhist analysis of *物* is that it is, in effect, the rehearsal for the analysis of *self* (人, 我). If you cannot see that the *物* you take as self-standing is in fact a relational, conditionally arisen appearance, you will not be able to see the same about the *self* that grasps at *物*. The *Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā*'s move of treating *人* and *物* in the same analytical frame is not incidental: the apparent self and the apparent objects mutually constitute each other. To learn to see through *物* is to begin learning to see through the assumption of self.
3.5 Practice, not just theory
Finally, the Chan tradition's insistence that *物* is to be probed, not defined, is a reminder that the point of all this analysis is not the analysis itself. The peony is in front of you. The notification is on your phone. The grief is in your chest. The work is on your desk. Each is a *物*. The teaching is what happens when you meet each one without the hidden assumption that it is a self-standing thing you must either possess or destroy.
四、常见误读与澄清
Several misreadings recur. Let me list them and address each.
4.1 "物 = matter"
The most common misreading is that *物* in Buddhist usage is essentially "matter" or "physical object." This collapses five of the six strands. *物* includes: - property and livelihood (Āgama), - objects of cognition, including words and meanings (Yogācāra), - phenomena analyzed in their relational structure (Mahāyāna-sūtra-ālaṃkāra), - the bearer-of-properties in logical analysis (Madhyamaka), - the things of daily commerce (Śata-śāstra), - the koan-object of contemplation (Chan).
"Physical matter" captures only a small slice. To read *物* as "matter" is to miss the epistemological, ontological, logical, and contemplative dimensions entirely.
4.2 "No-self implies no-thing"
A second misreading: since Buddhism teaches *anātman* (no-self), it must also teach no-*物*. This is a category error. The Buddhist analysis does not deny the appearance of *物*; it denies the self-standing nature of *物*. The *Mahāyāna-sūtra-ālaṃkāra*'s "心外無有物，物無心亦無" is not a denial of *物*; it is a denial of *物* as independent of *心*, and *心* as independent of *物*. Both terms remain functional; neither has a fixed essence. This is structurally different from nihilism (which would say *物* does not appear) and structurally different from materialism (which would say *物* is primary and *心* is derivative).
4.3 Collapsing *物* with *事*, *法*, *境*, *名*
The classical materials are careful to distinguish terms, and modern readers often conflate them. The *Yogācārabhūmi* uses *事* (matter) as one classificatory term among many; it does not equate *事* with *物*. The *Mahāyāna-sūtra-ālaṃkāra* uses *物* and *事* interchangeably in some passages but maintains distinctions in others (*物* for the relational heart-mind structure, *事* for phenomenal appearance without essence). The *Mūlamadhyamaka-kārikā* does not substitute *事* for *物*. The Chan records use *事* and *理* in a binary that is its own structural device. Collapsing these into one term loses the analytical precision the tradition is at pains to maintain.
4.4 "If *物* has no essence, then anything goes"
Some readers infer from the analysis of *物* that "nothing really matters" or "all action is meaningless." This is the opposite of what the texts say. The *Saṃyuktāgama* explicitly gives ethical guidance for how to acquire, divide, and entrust *物*. The *Śata-śāstra* uses concrete, everyday *物* (bottle, cloth, milk, butter) precisely to do serious philosophical work. The Chan tradition probes *物* in order to wake up, not in order to be licensed into carelessness. The dissolution of *物*'s self-standing nature is not a permission slip; it is the precondition for ethical action that is not based on the illusion of possession.
4.5 "Chan says 'not *物*,' so don't engage with things"
Wenyi and Dahui do not teach withdrawal from *物*. Wenyi uses the peony in front of him. Dahui cites the sutra on "應物現形" — the Buddha appearing in response to sentient beings as the moon appears in water. The whole point of "不是心，不是佛，不是物" is that the very distinction between engagement and withdrawal is being cut through, not that one should now choose withdrawal. Reading the negation as a prescription for disengagement is a misreading of negation as absence; in this tradition, negation is a means of seeing what is actually present.
4.6 Treating different texts as saying the same thing
A more subtle misreading: assuming the Āgama, Yogācāra, Madhyamaka, and Chan texts are saying the same thing about *物* in different words. They are not. They are saying related but distinct things, and the differences matter. The Āgama is doing ethical analysis of livelihood; the Yogācāra is doing epistemological analysis of cognition; the Madhyamaka is doing logical analysis of metaphysical assumptions; the Chan is doing contemplative analysis of fixation. A reader who treats them as one voice will miss the fact that each is designed to undo a specific kind of attachment.
结语
*物* (vastu) is, in the end, a way of asking: what is it that shows up to you, and what do you assume about it? The Buddhist tradition answers that the assumptions — that *物* is self-standing, that you possess it, that it has an essence, that it is the third term in a subject-object split — are not the appearances themselves. The appearances remain. The grain is real grain. The peony is real peony. The notification is real notification. The grief is real grief. What is being undone is the hidden metaphysics that makes these into substances, possessions, fixed essences, or third terms.
That is why the *Saṃyuktāgama* can teach fourfold property division and *Muḷamadhyamakakārikā* can deny *物*-as-substance in the same tradition. They are not contradicting each other. They are addressing different layers of the same assumption. The first teaches you to handle *物* with responsibility; the second teaches you to see through the assumption that *物* is a fixed thing to be handled. Both are needed. The first without the second leaves you managing possessions; the second without the first leaves you theorizing while the rent goes unpaid. The path that uses both is what the tradition means when it speaks of *物*.