--- title: "Ekaggatā: Single-Pointedness and the Object-Structure Argument" author: "釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing)" series: "Six Practice Gates, Volume 4 — SĪLA: From Pāli Vinaya to Sign-less Precepts · Part I · Pāli Roots" series_short: "SILA" volume: 3 paper_id: "SILA-P04" paper_number: 4 part: "Part I · Pāli Roots" part_number: 1 date: "2026-05-17" version: "1.0" license: "CC BY-NC-SA 4.0" --- # *Ekaggatā* **Single-Pointedness and the Object-Structure Argument** *中文主題：心一境性——對境結構與普遍演現之約束* --- **Author:** 釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing) **Date:** May 2026 **License:** CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 **Version:** 1.0 **Series:** SĪLA — From Pāli Vinaya to Sign-less Precepts --- ## Abstract The preceding paper (SILA-P03) closed by registering, after Buddhaghosa's *Visuddhimagga* Chapter VII §4, two reasons why the recollection of one's own ethical conduct (*sīlānussati*) reaches access concentration (*upacāra-samādhi*) but not full absorption (*appanā-samādhi*): the depth (*gambhīratā*) of the virtues recollected and the practitioner's inclination toward recollecting virtues of many kinds (*nānappakāra-guṇānussaraṇa-adhimuttatā*). Both reasons point to the structure of the object rather than to a deficiency in the practitioner. The present paper lifts that special-case observation to a categorical claim across all forty *kammaṭṭhāna*: meditation subjects whose objects are structurally multiple admit only access concentration; meditation subjects whose objects are single-and-homogeneous admit full absorption. The Pāli anchor is the second-*jhāna* pericope shared by *Dīgha Nikāya* 22 and *Majjhima Nikāya* 10 — *cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ*, "mind at one" — together with the AN 6.10 verbal cascade *cittaṁ samādhiyati*. The Chinese anchor is twofold: the *Saṃyukta-āgama* (T0099) phrase 內淨一心 ("inner-purified one-mind") attested at five fascicle-distinct sites and its cross-translator witness 內靜一心 ("inner-stilled one-mind") in the *Madhyama Āgama* (T0026); and the Yogācāra anchor *Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra* (T1579), fascicle 11, where Xuanzang gives the term its post-canonical technical definition — "concentration is, with regard to an object, scrutinised observation, mental one-pointedness" — making explicit that the object (於所緣) is grammatically necessary, not modifier. The two recollections that *do* reach absorption — mindfulness of breathing (*ānāpāna-sati*) and mindfulness immersed in the body (*kāyagatā-sati*) — confirm rather than refute the partition: their objects are direct sensory contact, not propositional multiplicity. The axis is object-shape, not practice-name. The paper closes Part I of the SĪLA volume and prefigures SAMĀDHI: the chain from ethical conduct to concentration emerges naturally — *sīla* → non-remorse → joy → tranquility → bliss → *samādhi* — rather than by force. **Keywords:** *ekaggatā*, *cittass'ekaggatā*, mental one-pointedness, 心一境性, 一心, *cetaso ekodibhāva*, access concentration, *upacāra-samādhi*, full absorption, *appanā-samādhi*, object-structure, *kammaṭṭhāna*, *paṭibhāga-nimitta*, counterpart sign, four-*jhāna* pericope, intrinsic-nature limb, *svabhāva-aṅga*, Xuanzang, Yogācāra register, Part I closer. --- ## I. Problem Setting ### 1.1 Carry-over from the preceding paper P03 closed with a circumscribed finding: the recollection of one's own ethical conduct stops at access concentration and does not reach absorption, and the reason given by Buddhaghosa at *Visuddhimagga* VII §4 is twofold — the depth of what is recollected and the practitioner's inclination to recollect virtues of many kinds. Both reasons, P03 argued, are features of the object, not of the practitioner. The ceiling is constitutive of what *sīlānussati* is: an irreducible function performed at access-level concentration, completed within access, asking neither for absorption nor for any further pressure on the practitioner's effort. The next question presents itself without strain. If the ceiling of *sīlānussati* is owed to the structure of its object — an eight-fold ethical content, plural in kind — is the same explanation extensible to the other recollections, and beyond them to the entire taxonomy of forty meditation subjects (*cattāḷīsa kammaṭṭhānāni*) that Buddhaghosa lays out in *Visuddhimagga* Chapter III? ### 1.2 The generalisation The present paper answers in the affirmative. The two reasons named at Chapter VII §4 are not special features of *sīla*; they are special features of any object that is structurally multiple — any object the practitioner must hold across several distinguishable items at once. Wherever an object exhibits that shape, the recollection or contemplation built on it reaches access and halts. Wherever an object exhibits the opposite shape — single, homogeneous, perceptually one — the contemplation built on it admits the progressive refinement that ends in absorption. The cross-cutting partition lies in the object, not in the practice-name. P03 supplies the *why* for the special case; the present paper extracts the universal rule and reads the whole forty-*kammaṭṭhāna* taxonomy through it. ### 1.3 The Chinese title and its register self-awareness A note on translation register is owed at the outset. The Chinese term 心一境性 (literally "mind-one-object-nature"), which the present paper uses as its anchor, is itself a seventh-century post-canonical technical translation standardised by Xuanzang (玄奘, c. 600–664) in the *Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra* and adjacent Yogācāra treatises. The earlier Chinese canonical strata do not use it. The fifth-century *Saṃyukta-āgama* (T0099, trans. Guṇabhadra, c. 435–443) and the late fourth-century *Madhyama Āgama* (T0026, trans. Saṅghadeva, c. 397–398) render the same underlying Pāli phrase as 內淨一心 ("inner-purified one-mind") and 內靜一心 ("inner-stilled one-mind") respectively, with 一心 ("one-mind") as the shared core. The Pāli pericope from which both Chinese renderings derive uses *cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ* ("mind at one"), not *ekaggatā* (the abstract noun) directly. The choice to use 心一境性 as this paper's title is therefore deliberate: it places the argument on the Yogācāra register — the abhidharmic systematisation of a doctrine the sutta layer had stated less abstractly — while keeping the earlier Chinese 一心 and the underlying Pāli *cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ* in explicit view. A reader who carries the seventh-century term back into the sutta layer without that signposting misreads three centuries of translation work as if it were a single uniform vocabulary. The present paper foregrounds the layering. ### 1.4 The *sutta-jhāna* debate, bracketed A second clarification on scope is owed. The last three decades have produced a substantial Western scholarly debate over whether the *jhāna* of the suttas is identical with, weaker than, or otherwise distinct from the *jhāna* of the *Visuddhimagga* (Brasington 2015, Shankman 2008, the writings of Ajahn Brahmali and Bhante Sujato, among others). The present paper does not enter that debate. Its thesis is placed upstream of the contested point: whatever the precise altitude or phenomenology of *jhāna* is taken to be, the *Visuddhimagga*'s Chapters III and IV partition meditation subjects by the structure of their objects in a way that stands stable across both readings. A single-homogeneous *kasiṇa* admits a progressive sign-refinement that reaches absorption; an eight-fold ethical recollection does not. The partition does not depend on which side of the *sutta-jhāna* debate the reader stands. §IV.4 will register the debate as an open background; it is not engaged here. ### 1.5 Part I closer and the forward link The present paper closes Part I of the SĪLA volume. The four-paper architecture of that Part can now be stated as a four-step progression of one continuous reading: P01 distinguished the three axes of ethical conduct — *sīla*, *saṃvara*, *vinaya*; P02 read the eight virtues led by *akhaṇḍa* on the *subject-side* as the noble disciple's attribute-content in the four-limb stream-entry formula; P03 read the same eight virtues on the *object-side* as the content the disciple reflexively recollects; P04 generalises the object-side reading from the special case of *sīla* to the entire forty-*kammaṭṭhāna* taxonomy as the universal object-structure constraint. With the universal constraint in place, the SĪLA volume hands forward to SAMĀDHI: the operational layer of individual meditation subjects, the practical specifics of how a single-homogeneous object is brought through the sign-progression to absorption, belongs to that next volume's main scene. The present paper closes a doctrinal frame; the practice belongs to what follows. Two anchors, one canonical and one commentarial, should sit visibly at the head of the argument. The Pāli is the second-*jhāna* pericope shared by *Dīgha Nikāya* 22 and *Majjhima Nikāya* 10: > *Vitakkavicārānaṁ vūpasamā ajjhattaṁ sampasādanaṁ cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ avitakkaṁ avicāraṁ samādhijaṁ pītisukhaṁ dutiyaṁ jhānaṁ upasampajja viharati.*[^1] Bhante Sujato's public-domain rendering: > "…they enter and remain in the second absorption, which has the rapture and bliss born of immersion, with internal clarity and mind at one, without placing the mind and keeping it connected."[^2] The Chinese-Yogācāra anchor is the *Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra*'s definition at fascicle 11: > 「三摩地者，謂於所緣審正觀察，心一境性。」 ("Concentration is, with regard to an object, scrutinised observation, mental one-pointedness.")[^3] The three words 於所緣 ("with regard to an object") are not modifier but grammatical condition: the object is not background to *samādhi*; it is the necessary correlate without which *samādhi* does not occur. The Yogācāra definition states in one sentence what the present paper expands across five sections. --- ## II. Canonical Sources ### 2.1 The Pāli axis: the second-*jhāna* pericope and the verbal cascade The Pāli canon's testimony to mental one-pointedness comes in two registers — a nominal register that names the unifying factor and a verbal register that describes how the mind comes to be unified. The nominal anchor is the second-*jhāna* pericope (DN 22 §858–868; MN 10 mirror, identical wording), already cited at §I.5 above. The same pericope recurs across both the *Dīgha* and *Majjhima* statements of right concentration (*sammā-samādhi*), and the phrase *cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ* — Sujato's "mind at one" — marks, from the second *jhāna* onward, the stable element that persists when initial application (*vitakka*) and sustained application (*vicāra*) fall away. The four-*jhāna* pericope thus places mental one-pointedness as the continuing factor across the higher *jhānas*, not as a feature of the first alone. A philological caveat is owed. The pericope does not in fact use the abstract noun *ekaggatā* (or its compound *cittass'ekaggatā*); it uses *cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ*. The identification of *ekodibhāva* with *ekaggatā* is a commentarial step, executed by Buddhaghosa at *Visuddhimagga* Chapter III and Chapter IV, where the two terms are treated as equivalent. The present paper inherits that identification with the *Visuddhimagga*, but signals the move rather than collapsing the two layers: in the sutta pericope, the term is *ekodibhāva*; the abstract-noun anchor *ekaggatā* — eventually to be standardised into Chinese as 心一境性 — is properly a commentarial term picked up by the entire Theravāda Abhidhamma stream and, on the Mahāyāna side, by the Yogācāra treatises Xuanzang would later translate. The verbal register supplies a complementary anchor. AN 6.10, the *Mahānāmasutta*, closes its six-recollection pericope with a five-step ascending chain that culminates in the verb-form *cittaṁ samādhiyati* ("the mind enters concentration," literally "the mind is concentrated"): > *Pamuditassa pīti jāyati, pītimanassa kāyo passambhati, passaddhakāyo sukhaṁ vediyati, sukhino cittaṁ samādhiyati.*[^4] The five steps — joy (*pāmojja*), rapture (*pīti*), tranquility (*passaddhi*), bliss (*sukha*), concentration (*samādhi*) — recur unchanged across all six recollections (Buddha, Dhamma, Saṅgha, *sīla*, *cāga*, *devatā*), repeated six times in the canonical pericope, and a near-identical formulation appears at AN 11.11 (*Paṭhamamahānāma*) and AN 4.14 (where the concentration-factor *samādhi-sambojjhaṅga* is placed as the sixth of the seven awakening-factors, slotting one-pointedness structurally into the *bodhi-pakkhiya* architecture). The cascade form's significance for the present paper is that it gives mental one-pointedness as a *psychological process* rather than as a static factor — the mind is *brought into* concentration through a sequence whose earlier links are themselves natural emergences from one another. The implications of this verbal-process register will return in §VI. ### 2.2 The Chinese axis: 內淨一心 and 內靜一心 The Chinese side of the canon preserves the same pericope under two near-identical translations from two distinct translator-traditions of the fourth and fifth centuries. The *Saṃyukta-āgama* (T0099), translated under the patronage of the Liu-Song court by Guṇabhadra (求那跋陀羅) between approximately 435 and 443 CE, renders the second-*jhāna* formula at five locations across multiple fascicles: > 「離有覺有觀，內淨一心，無覺無觀，定生喜樂，具足第二禪……」 ("Separated from applied and sustained thought, with inner purity and one-mind, without applied or sustained thought, with joy and bliss born of concentration, one attains and dwells in the second *jhāna*.")[^5] The five locations distribute across distinct narrative settings — the Susīma dialogue (fascicle 14, on the relation between insight and the *jhāna*s), the food-and-no-food twelvefold-arising material (fascicle 17), the Mahāmaudgalyāyana noble-silence episode (fascicle 18), the Citra householder petition (fascicle 21), and the five-aggregates contemplation (fascicle 31). The repetition across five sites, in five different conversational frames, attested in one continuous translation programme, secures 內淨一心 as Guṇabhadra's stable Chinese rendering rather than as a one-off variant. The three characters carry the Pāli pericope across the translation interface: 內 corresponds to *ajjhattaṁ* (inwardly), 淨 to *sampasādanaṁ* (purity, clarity), and 一心 to *cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ* (mind at one). The decisive philological fact is the third graph-pair: 一心 ("one-mind") is the Chinese-side correspondent to the Pāli *ekodibhāva* and, by the commentarial identification, to *ekaggatā*. The cross-translator witness comes from the *Madhyama Āgama* (T0026), translated by Saṅghadeva (僧伽提婆) in the Eastern Jin period, approximately 397–398 CE, at fascicle 25: > 「彼覺、觀已息，內靜一心，無覺、無觀，定生喜、樂，得第二禪成就遊。」 ("When that one's applied and sustained thought have ceased, with inner stillness and one-mind, without applied or sustained thought, with joy and bliss born of concentration, one attains and dwells in the second *jhāna*.")[^6] The single graph that differs from Guṇabhadra's rendering — 靜 ("stilled, quiescent") in place of 淨 ("purified, clear") — registers a permissible translation variant for *sampasādanaṁ*, which carries both senses in Pāli. The decisive identity is the unchanged 一心. Two translators, two translation venues, two distinct ancestor recensions (the *Saṃyukta-āgama* descending from a Sarvāstivāda-affiliated transmission, the *Madhyama Āgama* from a related but distinguishable Sarvāstivāda recension), preserve "one-mind" as the Chinese rendering for *cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ* / *ekaggatā* in the second-*jhāna* pericope. The cross-translator stability is the documentary base of the present paper's reading: the term 一心, in the Chinese canonical layer, is not a stylistic preference but a structural correspondent settled across two independent translator-traditions. ### 2.3 The commentarial axis: *Visuddhimagga* Chapters III, IV, and VII The systematic abhidhammic framing of the partition belongs to the *Visuddhimagga*. Chapter III (*Kammaṭṭhāna-niddesa*, the exposition of meditation subjects) lays out the forty *kammaṭṭhāna* and surveys their classification along several axes, including the axis of which subjects admit access concentration only and which admit full absorption. Chapter IV (*Paṭhavī-kasiṇa-niddesa*, the exposition of the earth *kasiṇa*) gives the exemplary case for an absorption-admitting subject: a uniform earth disk, single in colour and texture, presented to the eye and then progressively interiorised through the three signs (the cognitive mechanism returned to in §V.2). Chapter VII §4 (*Sīlānussati-niddesa*, the exposition of the recollection of ethical conduct) gives the access-only verdict for the *sīla* recollection, with the two reasons P03 quoted: the depth of the virtues recollected and the inclination to recollect virtues of many kinds. A citation caveat is owed. The present author's working Pāli corpus does not include verbatim digital text for Chapters III and IV of the *Visuddhimagga* (the relevant GRETIL files carry a publication-restricted license and have not been embedded); the references in this paper are therefore made at chapter-section level — by chapter name and by the section heading from Ñāṇamoli's published English translation — without paragraph numbering. Paragraph-level citation is pending physical consultation with the Buddhist Publication Society's fourth edition of Ñāṇamoli's *The Path of Purification*; readers seeking that precision should consult Ñāṇamoli directly. The chapter-name citations as deployed below are sufficient to identify the textual locus without making philological claims the present working corpus cannot support. ### 2.4 Five further Pāli witnesses, cited but not quoted Five further sutta loci are central to the abhidharmic treatment of *ekaggatā* / *cittass'ekaggatā* and are listed here as canonical witnesses for the present argument, though the author's working corpus does not contain their texts and the present paper accordingly cites them by PTS reference only, without verbatim quotation: - *Cūḷavedalla-sutta*, MN 44 (PTS MN i 301), in which the nun Dhammadinnā gives the famous short definition: "what is concentration? — mental one-pointedness" (*cittass'ekaggatā yo samādhi*). - *Samādhindriya-sutta*, SN 48.9–10 (PTS SN v 197–198), on the placement of *ekaggatā* in the analysis of the concentration-faculty among the five spiritual faculties. - *Saṅgīti-sutta*, DN 33 (PTS DN iii 207ff), which places *ekaggatā* in its Dhamma-numerical listings of doctrinal items. - *Samādhibhāvanā-sutta*, AN 4.41 (PTS AN ii 44), which enumerates four developments of *samādhi* by four distinct functional aims. - *Samādhi-sutta*, AN 5.27 (PTS AN iii 24), which carries a closely related short definition of *samādhi* as *cittass'ekaggatā*. These citations stand here as PTS-located witnesses to the canonical embedding of the term, and the reader seeking primary text should consult Bhikkhu Bodhi's translations — the *Middle Length Discourses* (Wisdom 1995/2009), the *Connected Discourses* (Wisdom 2000), and the *Numerical Discourses* (Wisdom 2012) — each of which includes the Pāli text alongside its English rendering and a substantial scholarly introduction.[^7] The present paper holds itself to a strict discipline of not reconstructing verbatim Pāli from memory or secondary paraphrase: the absent witnesses are noted by reference, not approximated by improvisation. --- ## III. The Yogācāra Systematization ### 3.1 The *Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra* definition The most condensed Chinese formulation of mental one-pointedness as a technical doctrinal item comes from Xuanzang's translation of the *Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra* (T1579, attributed to Maitreya and Asaṅga, translated in the years following Xuanzang's return from India in 645). At fascicle 11: > 「三摩地者，謂於所緣審正觀察，心一境性。世尊於無漏方便中，先說三摩地，後說解脫。由三摩地善成滿力，於諸煩惱心永解脫故。」 ("Concentration is, with regard to an object, scrutinised observation, mental one-pointedness. The World-Honoured One, among the means of non-affliction, first taught concentration and then taught liberation. By the well-completed force of concentration, the mind permanently liberates from defilements.")[^8] The grammatical structure of the first clause is the philosophical kernel. *Samādhi* is the term defined; 於所緣 ("with regard to an object," rendering *ālambana* or *ārammaṇa*) is the prepositional condition; 審正觀察 ("scrutinised observation") names the cognitive operation; 心一境性 ("mental one-pointedness") names the structural result. The placement of 於所緣 is grammatically non-deletable: the definition does not say that *samādhi* incidentally happens to involve an object; it says that *samādhi* is *the* operation that occurs when scrutinised observation holds an object in one-pointed unification. The Chinese formulation, in a single sentence, registers the doctrine the present paper articulates across the whole of §V: mental one-pointedness is not a property of the mind in isolation; it is a relational property obtaining between mind and a particular object-structure. Without an object, no *samādhi*; without a particular object-shape, no particular *samādhi*-quality. ### 3.2 The four-*jhāna* five-factor structure A second passage in the same fascicle places mental one-pointedness across the four *jhāna*s with explicit factor-by-factor enumeration: > 「於初靜慮具足五支：一、尋，二、伺，三、喜，四、樂，五、心一境性。第二靜慮有四支：一、內等淨，二、喜，三、樂，四、心一境性。第三靜慮有五支：一、捨，二、念，三、正知，四、樂，五、心一境性。第四靜慮有四支：一、捨清淨，二、念清淨，三、不苦不樂受，四、心一境性。」 ("The first *jhāna* has five factors: applied thought, sustained thought, rapture, bliss, mental one-pointedness. The second *jhāna* has four factors: inner equanimity-clarity, rapture, bliss, mental one-pointedness. The third *jhāna* has five factors: equanimity, mindfulness, full awareness, bliss, mental one-pointedness. The fourth *jhāna* has four factors: pure equanimity, pure mindfulness, neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling, mental one-pointedness.")[^9] Across the four *jhānas*, only one factor recurs unchanged: 心一境性. Applied and sustained thought fall away at the transition to the second *jhāna*; rapture falls away at the third; bliss falls away at the fourth (replaced by neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling). Mental one-pointedness persists from the first *jhāna* through the fourth. This is not an incidental concurrence; it is the *Yogācārabhūmi*'s structural argument for the identity of *jhāna*-as-such. What makes a *jhāna* a *jhāna*, the factor enumeration says, is the unbroken thread of mental one-pointedness running through every altitude. Everything else — the applied thought, the rapture, the bliss — is contingent decoration. ### 3.3 The intrinsic-nature limb (*svabhāva-aṅga*) Sthiramati's *Abhidharma-samuccaya-vyākhyā* (T1606, the commentarial elaboration of Asaṅga's *Abhidharma-samuccaya*, also Xuanzang trans.) carries the analysis one structural step further at fascicle 9: > 「初靜慮中尋伺二種是對治支，能斷欲界欲恚害等尋伺故。喜樂二種是利益支，由尋伺支治所治已得離生喜樂故。心一境性是彼二所依自性支，依止定力尋等轉故。」 ("In the first *jhāna*, applied thought and sustained thought are counteraction-limbs (*pratipakṣa-aṅga*), as they cut off the applied and sustained thoughts of sense-desire, ill-will, and harm in the desire realm. Rapture and bliss are benefit-limbs (*anuśaṃsa-aṅga*), since by the counteraction-limbs' having cut off what is counteracted, the rapture and bliss of seclusion arise. Mental one-pointedness is the intrinsic-nature limb (*svabhāva-aṅga*) on which the previous two depend, since it is by reliance on the strength of concentration that applied thought and the rest occur.")[^10] The three-fold classification is Sthiramati's commentarial structuring, not a sutta-level term, and the present paper carries that register-distinction explicitly. The first *jhāna*'s five factors divide into three structural classes: counteraction-limbs, which oppose particular defilements; benefit-limbs, which appear as the results of that opposition; and the single intrinsic-nature limb (*svabhāva-aṅga*) that is the *jhāna*'s own essential structure. Mental one-pointedness alone occupies the third class. Across the four *jhānas*, the counteraction-limbs vary (different defilements are opposed at different altitudes), and the benefit-limbs vary (rapture and bliss are exchanged for finer states), but the intrinsic-nature limb persists unchanged. The other factors are limbs *of* something; mental one-pointedness is what each *jhāna* essentially *is*. In Sthiramati's formulation, the Chinese Yogācāra commentary reaches the strongest single statement of the partition the present paper proposes: the object-relational structure of mental one-pointedness, rather than any of its accompanying factors, constitutes the *jhāna*-state. ### 3.4 The four bases of supernormal power, converging on one-pointedness A further structural witness comes from Asaṅga's *Abhidharma-samuccaya* (T1605) at fascicle 5, where the four bases of supernormal power (*cattāro iddhipādā*) — desire (*chanda*), effort (*viriya*), mind (*citta*), and investigation (*vīmaṃsā*) — are each said to terminate, in their developed form, in mental one-pointedness.[^11] The four paths converge on the same point. Whatever entry the practitioner takes, the developed terminus is the same factor. This is not an additional alternative to mental one-pointedness; it is a fourfold testimony that the developed concentration-faculty is the same regardless of which of the four faculties brought the practitioner there. The structural finding aligns with the four-*jhāna* enumeration above: mental one-pointedness is the unique invariant. ### 3.5 The *Vimuttimagga* precursor and the moral-neutrality witness Upatissa's *Vimuttimagga* (*The Path of Liberation*, T1648), translated into Chinese by Saṅghapāla in the early sixth century — a treatise affiliated with a Theravāda-adjacent abhidhammic tradition, whose Pāli original is no longer extant — preserves a precursor formulation in fascicle 1: > 「邪定、正定。云何邪定？不善一心，是謂邪定；若善一心，是謂正定。邪定當斷，正定應修。」 ("Wrong concentration, right concentration. What is wrong concentration? Unwholesome one-mind is called wrong concentration. What is wholesome one-mind is called right concentration. Wrong concentration is to be abandoned; right concentration is to be cultivated.")[^12] The passage carries two implications relevant to the present paper. First, the Chinese rendering 一心 — already documented in §2.2 as a fifth-century *Āgama* term — is here in active use in a sixth-century commentarial text, approximately a century and a half before Xuanzang would standardise 心一境性 as the Yogācāra technical term. The *Vimuttimagga* sits in the chain of Chinese precursors to the Yogācāra crystallisation. Second, the distinction Upatissa draws between wholesome and unwholesome one-mind makes the doctrinal status of *ekaggatā* explicit: the factor is morally neutral in itself. It is not self-validating. A criminal absorbed in planning a crime exhibits *ekaggatā*; so does a meditator absorbed in the contemplation of the earth disk. What distinguishes right from wrong concentration is not the presence or strength of mental one-pointedness but the moral character of the object on which it rests. Upatissa's distinction supplies a direct corollary of the present paper's central thesis: if the structure of the object determines what concentration can become, then the moral character of the object determines whether the concentration so reached is *sammā-samādhi* or *micchā-samādhi*. The two readings — structural and moral — are continuous applications of one principle. §V.4 returns to the moral dimension as an independent witness. ### 3.6 The four-channel translation migration The Chinese-side history of the term may be summarised as a four-stage migration across approximately five hundred years and three distinct translation venues: | Stage | Period | Translator and venue | Term | Register | |-------|--------|----------------------|------|----------| | 1 | Early 5th c. | Guṇabhadra, descriptive uses in the *Saṃyukta-āgama* | 一其心念 ("uniting one's mind-thought") | *Āgama*-layer descriptive usage | | 2a | 5th c. (Liu-Song) | Guṇabhadra, *Saṃyukta-āgama* (T0099) | 內淨一心 ("inner-purified one-mind") | Stable canonical translation, *Sarvāstivāda*-related transmission | | 2b | Late 4th c. (Eastern Jin) | Saṅghadeva, *Madhyama Āgama* (T0026) | 內靜一心 ("inner-stilled one-mind") | Cross-translator witness, same canonical layer | | 3 | Early 5th c. (Later Qin) | Kumārajīva, *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra* (T1509) | 一心 ("one-mind") | Mādhyamika-related treatise usage | | 4 | Early 6th c. (Liang) | Saṅghapāla, *Vimuttimagga* (T1648) | 一心 (善一心 / 不善一心) | Theravāda-related precursor commentary | | 5 | 7th c. | Xuanzang, *Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra* (T1579) and related | 心一境性 ("mental one-pointedness") | Yogācāra technical standardisation | The table records not a casual evolution but a structural concentration-history. The same underlying Pāli concept — the unification of the mind on a single object — is reached, independently and in succession, through three distinct translation venues (Sarvāstivāda-related Āgama; Mādhyamika-related *Mahāprajñāpāramitā* commentary; Yogācāra-related abhidharmic systematisation), each contributing one stable Chinese rendering. The Yogācāra crystallisation in Xuanzang's 心一境性 is not the replacement of the earlier renderings; it is the systematic culmination of a doctrinal vocabulary already laid down in the earlier strata. When a contemporary reader encounters the seven-character formula 三摩地者，謂於所緣審正觀察，心一境性, what is read is in fact the systematic terminus of a five-hundred-year terminological migration whose earlier stages — 一心, 內淨一心, 內靜一心 — remain visible in the canonical record. §I.3's register-self-awareness rests on this table. ### 3.7 The chain from *sīla* to *samādhi* in the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra* A final Chinese anchor closes the argument for the natural continuity from ethical conduct to concentration. Kumārajīva (344–413), translating Nāgārjuna's *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra* (T1509) in Chang'an under the patronage of the Later Qin around 401–413 — approximately one hundred and fifty years before Xuanzang's translation activity — gives at fascicle 13 a chain whose structural shape directly mirrors AN 11.1, the *Kimatthiyasutta* of the *Aṅguttara Nikāya*: > 「持戒之人，其心不悔，心不悔故得喜樂，得喜樂故得一心，得一心故得實智，得實智故得厭心，得厭心故得離欲，得離欲故得解脫，得解脫故得涅槃——如是持戒為諸善法根本。」 ("The person who upholds ethical conduct, their mind does not regret. Because their mind does not regret, they attain joy and bliss. Because they attain joy and bliss, they attain one-mind. Because they attain one-mind, they attain true wisdom. Because they attain true wisdom, they attain disenchantment. Because they attain disenchantment, they attain dispassion. Because they attain dispassion, they attain liberation. Because they attain liberation, they attain *nibbāna* — thus ethical conduct is the root of all wholesome states.")[^13] The Chinese chain corresponds, link for link, to the eleven-fold Pāli sequence at AN 11.1: *sīla* → *avippaṭisāra* (non-remorse) → *pāmojja* (joy) → *pīti* (rapture, here folded into 喜樂) → *passaddhi* (tranquility, similarly folded) → *sukha* (bliss) → *samādhi* (here rendered 一心) → *yathābhūta-ñāṇa* (knowledge-and-vision-of-things-as-they-are, here 實智) → *nibbidā* (disenchantment) → *virāga* (dispassion) → *vimutti* (liberation) → *nibbāna*. The Chinese translation of the seventh link — the *samādhi* link — uses 一心, not 心一境性. The terminological choice testifies again that 一心 is the canonical-stratum Chinese rendering for *samādhi*-as-one-pointedness, in use one and a half centuries before Xuanzang's systematic 心一境性. The chain itself supplies the doctrinal frame for §VI's closing reflection: the movement from ethical conduct to concentration is the natural emergence of one psychological state from another, link by link, not the forceful advance of a meditator pushing toward a target. --- ## IV. Dialogue with Modern Scholarship The present paper continues the three-scholar conversational frame inaugurated in P01 and developed across P02 and P03: Bhante Anālayo, Rupert Gethin, and Bhikkhu Bodhi. The structure of the dialogue takes a two-step form — first **Concede**, granting fully what each scholar's labour has secured; then **Extend**, marking the layer at which the present paper carries the work forward. The aim is neither correction nor displacement but extension: each predecessor's accomplishment is the platform on which the present paper builds. ### 4.1 Anālayo **Concede:** Anālayo's labour secures two contributions on which §I and §II of this paper directly rest. First, the strict lexical distinction between *sati* and *samādhi* — and, by extension, between the receptive present-holding of mindfulness and the structured unification of concentration — preserves a difference that contemporary Western mindfulness discourse has been prone to blur. The distinction was already deployed in P03 §1.1 and carries forward into the present paper's separation of recollection-objects from concentration-objects. Second, the cross-traditional methodology of his *Saṃyukta-āgama Studies* (2015), in which the second-*jhāna* pericope is shown to stand stable across Pāli and Chinese Āgama transmissions, supplies the textual ground on which §I.5 and §II.2 build. Anālayo's positioning of the four-*jhāna* pericope as a pre-sectarian witness — a formula stabilised before the school-period division and preserved in mutually independent Pāli and Chinese transmissions — secures the documentary base for the present paper's reading. His careful bracketing of the *sutta-jhāna* versus *Visuddhimagga-jhāna* debate as a question whose resolution does not affect the canonical witness itself is also adopted here without modification. **Extend:** Anālayo's analysis operates principally at the level of textual stability and at the level of cross-traditional comparison. The present paper asks a question one analytic layer finer: given that the second-*jhāna* pericope holds stable across traditions and that mental one-pointedness is its invariant unifying factor, what determines whether a given practitioner's *ekaggatā* can refine from access-level to absorption-level? The answer the present paper proposes — that the object-structure determines the ceiling — sits one layer below cross-traditional textual stability. It is a structural-doctrinal claim that builds on Anālayo's philological work without displacing it. The textual stability his methodology has secured is precisely what makes the structural argument possible: only because the same partition holds across traditions can the partition itself be read as structural rather than as redactional accident. ### 4.2 Gethin **Concede:** Rupert Gethin's *The Buddhist Path to Awakening* (Brill 1992 / Oneworld 2001) and *The Foundations of Buddhism* (Oxford 1998) supply two structural orientations the present paper inherits in full. The first is the placement of *samādhi* within the *bodhi-pakkhiya-dhammā*, the architecture of the qualities conducive to awakening: *samādhi* is one of the five faculties (*indriya*), one of the five powers (*bala*), one of the eight limbs of the noble eightfold path, and the sixth of the seven awakening-factors. Concentration is not a peripheral or specialist concern; it is a structural component of the integral path, woven through multiple canonical taxonomies (Gethin 1992, ch. 7). The second is the survey of the forty *kammaṭṭhāna* and their canonical and commentarial classification (Gethin 1992, ch. 7; 1998, ch. 3): the partition between subjects admitting absorption and subjects admitting only access concentration is registered within Buddhaghosa's classification and discussed in its proper structural context. The character-ethics reading of *sīla* — already adopted in P01 and P02 — also extends through the present paper's treatment of *sīlānussati*'s object as already-cultivated character rather than externally-imposed rule. Lance Cousins's 1973 essay "Buddhist Jhāna: Its Nature and Attainment According to the Pāli Sources" (in the journal *Religion* 3, no. 1) is cited here in passing reference only; the present paper has not directly consulted that article and acknowledges it via Gethin's note. **Extend:** Gethin's survey operates at the level of structural cartography — which component belongs to which taxonomy, how the *kammaṭṭhāna* are classified, where the partition between absorption-admitting and access-only subjects is registered. The present paper asks the next question: what *constitutes* the partition? Gethin's survey records that the partition exists; the present paper proposes that the partition is owed to the structural shape of the object — single-homogeneous versus multiple-propositional — and that the partition is, in consequence, a universal structural constraint on the realisation of mental one-pointedness in all forty subjects, not a contingent feature of any one of them. The cartographic survey is the platform; the structural argument is the next layer up. ### 4.3 Bodhi **Concede:** Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation labour supplies three foundations the present paper takes up. First, his strict rendering of *anussati* as *recollection*, sharply distinguished from the *mindfulness* of *sati*, was foundational for P03 §1.1 and remains operative throughout the present paper. Second, his editorial introductions to *The Connected Discourses* (Wisdom 2000) and *The Numerical Discourses* (Wisdom 2012) furnish the contemporary anglophone scholarly grounding for the canonical context of *cittass'ekaggatā*. Third, his footnoted distinction in those introductions between the rendering of *ekaggatā* as "one-pointedness" in *Visuddhimagga* contexts — where the abhidhammic specification is at issue — and the looser rendering as "unification" or "single-focus" in sutta contexts, where the term carries less abstractive weight, is itself the scholarly source of the register-self-awareness articulated in §I.3 of the present paper. The discipline of register-marking — knowing when one is reading sutta-layer language and when one is reading commentarial-layer language — that Bodhi's translation apparatus models throughout his three-Nikāya project is one of the present paper's methodological inheritances. **Extend:** Bodhi's labour reaches the level of translation register and footnote-gloss. The migration of the Chinese-side rendering across approximately five hundred years and three translation venues — *Āgama* 一其心念 → fifth-to-sixth-century 一心 / 內淨一心 / 內靜一心 → seventh-century 心一境性 — is a parallel register-migration on the Chinese side that lies outside the apparatus of Pāli-English translation. The present paper extends Bodhi's discipline of register-distinction into the Chinese terminological history, reading the four-channel migration documented in §III.6 as a structural witness to the same doctrinal partition appearing under successive translation lenses. The cross-translation-tradition concentration is itself evidence: when three independent translation streams converge on one structural concept, the convergence supplies an independent line of testimony to the doctrine's centrality. ### 4.4 A three-scholar synthesis Across the three readings — Anālayo's cross-traditional textual stability, Gethin's structural cartography of the path-architecture and the *kammaṭṭhāna* taxonomy, Bodhi's translation-register discipline — the present paper extracts a categorical generalisation. The partition between access-admitting and absorption-admitting meditation subjects is not a contingent feature of any one canon or any one commentarial tradition; it is a universal realisation-constraint owed to the structure of the object. The three scholars' labour reaches the external survey of text and structure; the present paper takes that survey as the platform and proposes the structural-doctrinal layer underlying it. The argument's authority for that next layer comes not from any modern reading but from Buddhaghosa at *Visuddhimagga* Chapter III and Chapter IV — to which §V now turns. The *sutta-jhāna*-versus-*Visuddhimagga-jhāna* debate, registered in passing at §I.4, stands deliberately upstream of this argument: the partition is canonical on either side of the contested altitude question. --- ## V. The Object-Structure Argument ### 5.1 The two-recollection exception A potential counter-example to the partition presents itself within the *anussati* list itself. Of the ten recollections enumerated by Buddhaghosa at *Visuddhimagga* Chapter III (the six standard recollections plus recollection of death, recollection of peace, mindfulness of breathing, and mindfulness immersed in the body), eight cap at access-level concentration as predicted by the structural thesis. But two members of the list — mindfulness of breathing (*ānāpāna-sati*) and mindfulness immersed in the body (*kāyagatā-sati*) — reach absorption: the breath-mindfulness up to the fourth *jhāna*, the body-mindfulness up to the first. If the partition is owed to object-structure, why do these two recollections cross it? The closer reading reveals that the exceptions confirm rather than refute the thesis. The object of mindfulness of breathing, in its developed form, is not a propositional content carrying multiple distinguishable items; it is the direct sensory contact of the in-breath and out-breath at the touch-point of the nostrils or upper lip. The object of mindfulness immersed in the body, in its developed form, is not a list of conceptual virtues to be recollected but the visualised image of the body's thirty-two parts (head-hair, body-hair, nails, teeth, skin, and so on), each held as a direct visualised percept rather than as a propositional content. In both cases, the object is single-homogeneous in the structurally relevant sense: it is a direct percept, not a list of distinguishable items each carrying its own enactive content. The classification axis is therefore object-shape, not practice-name. The eight recollections that stop at access — Buddha, Dhamma, Saṅgha, ethical conduct, generosity, the deities, death, and peace — are placed under the *anussati* heading because they all involve directed remembering of a settled doctrinal content; that classificatory heading does not in itself determine the concentration ceiling. What determines the ceiling is whether the object the recollection takes is structurally plural (multiple distinguishable items held simultaneously or in sequence) or structurally singular (a direct percept held one-pointedly). Mindfulness of breathing and mindfulness immersed in the body share the *anussati* heading with the eight access-only recollections because the heading classifies by practice type; they share the absorption-admitting structural property with the *kasiṇa* meditation subjects because the property classifies by object-shape. The two classification axes are independent. P03's special case — *sīlānussati*'s access-level ceiling — risked being read as a deficiency in a single practice; if it were the only example, that reading would have remained plausible. The two-recollection exception forecloses the deficiency reading and converts the special case into the categorical thesis: the partition is structural, not idiosyncratic. ### 5.2 The three-sign progression The cognitive mechanism by which a single-homogeneous object is brought through to absorption is laid out at *Visuddhimagga* Chapter IV in the exposition of the earth *kasiṇa* and is the *how* underlying the *why* P03 gave for the access-only ceiling. The mechanism has three stages. The first stage is the preparatory sign (*parikamma-nimitta*). The practitioner takes a physical disk of uniform earth-coloured material as the meditation object, sets it at the proper distance, and contemplates it with the eyes open. The mind is still dependent on direct sensory contact; the object exists outside the practitioner as a physical thing. The second stage is the acquired sign (*uggaha-nimitta*). After repeated contemplation, the practitioner can close the eyes and the image of the disk arises internally, faithful in its features to the physical original. The dependence on outer perception has dropped; the object is now an internal mental image, though still carrying the particulars of the physical disk (its texture, its edge, the small irregularities of the original). The third stage is the counterpart sign (*paṭibhāga-nimitta*). The internal image refines, purifies, and stabilises further. The particulars of the original drop away — the texture, the small irregularities — and what remains is a luminous, still, pure mental form, clear as a polished mirror or as moonlight on still water. At this stage the mind can rest fully on the sign, and full absorption (*appanā-samādhi*) becomes accessible.[^14] The three-stage progression is the cognitive specification of the partition: only an object that admits this progressive refinement — only a single-homogeneous object capable of being interiorised, purified, and stabilised as a counterpart sign — admits the absorption that comes through resting on the counterpart sign. The eight access-only recollections, whose objects are propositional contents distributed across multiple distinguishable items, admit only the first two stages of refinement. There is no homogeneous direct percept available to be refined into a counterpart sign, because there is no single percept in the first place; the practitioner's attention moves among eight virtues, each carrying its own conceptual structure. The recollection plateaus at access. The three-sign progression supplies the cognitive *how* for the structural *why* P03 gave: the depth of the virtues and the multiplicity of the kinds make a counterpart sign cognitively impossible. ### 5.3 The Sarvāstivāda-Theravāda divergence A philological witness to the partition's structural status comes from a divergence between the *Saṃyukta-āgama* and the *Saṃyutta Nikāya* at corresponding loci on the analysis of the concentration-faculty. In Guṇabhadra's *Saṃyukta-āgama*, sūtra 647 of fascicle 26, the concentration-faculty is defined experientially: > 「何等為定根？若聖弟子離欲、惡不善法⋯⋯具足第四禪⋯⋯是名定根。」 ("What is the concentration-faculty? When a noble disciple, separated from sense-desire and unwholesome states … attains and dwells in the fourth *jhāna* … this is called the concentration-faculty.")[^15] The Pāli parallel, SN 48.10 of the *Indriya-saṃyutta*, defines the same faculty by an abstract mental-factor term: *cittass'ekaggatā* — mental one-pointedness. The two canonical formulations witness the same underlying doctrinal content under structurally different framings: the Sarvāstivāda transmission preserves the experiential definition (the four *jhānas* as accomplished states), reserving abstract mental-factor analysis for the commentarial layer; the Theravāda transmission carries the abstract-factor analysis into the sutta layer itself, defining the faculty by its constituent mental factor rather than by its experiential expression. The divergence is not a contradiction but two complementary canonical strategies. It is also a strong confirmation of the present paper's thesis: the object-structure argument holds stable across both framings. Whether the concentration-faculty is defined experientially as the four *jhānas* or analytically as *cittass'ekaggatā*, the underlying partition between objects that admit absorption and objects that admit only access concentration remains the same. The structural claim does not depend on which canonical framing is taken as primary; it operates upstream of the canonical divergence. ### 5.4 The moral-neutrality witness A further independent confirmation comes from the wholesome-versus-unwholesome distinction registered in §3.5's reading of the *Vimuttimagga*. Mental one-pointedness, considered in itself as a mental factor, is morally neutral: it occurs in unwholesome states as well as in wholesome ones. A thief absorbed in the planning of a theft exhibits *ekaggatā*; a meditator absorbed in the contemplation of the earth *kasiṇa* exhibits *ekaggatā*. What distinguishes the wholesome from the unwholesome variant is not the strength or steadiness of the factor itself but the moral character of the object on which it rests. The Yogācārabhūmi's definition at §3.1 — concentration as scrutinised observation *with regard to an object* — already implies this moral-neutrality. The factor as such is content-less; what it becomes is determined by its object. Upatissa's terse formulation states the implication explicitly: unwholesome one-mind is wrong concentration; wholesome one-mind is right concentration. The moral-status reading runs parallel to the structural-altitude reading: just as the *structure* of the object determines whether *samādhi* reaches absorption, so the *moral character* of the object determines whether *samādhi* is *sammā-* or *micchā-*. The two readings are continuous applications of one principle: the object is the determinative correlate of what mental one-pointedness becomes. ### 5.5 The universal-realisation constraint articulated The argument can now be stated in full. Mental one-pointedness is a universal mental factor, present in some degree in every directed mental act — ordinary concentration on a task, the recollection of doctrinal content, the absorption of a *kasiṇa* contemplative. The factor itself varies in intensity along a continuous scale. But the maximum intensity any given meditation subject can yield is constrained by the structure of its object. Where the object is single-homogeneous, capable of being progressively interiorised and refined into a counterpart sign, the practice admits the full absorption that comes with resting on the counterpart sign. Where the object is structurally plural — propositional, conceptual, distributed across multiple distinguishable items — the practice admits the access-level concentration that comes with steady directed attention, but no further. The ceiling is structural; it is not owed to insufficient effort, deficient method, or lack of sustained training. A practitioner who selects *sīlānussati* as their meditation subject has thereby selected access concentration as the ceiling of that practice; the question "how can I push *sīlānussati* into absorption?" is not a question that can be answered, because it is structurally ill-formed. This is not an evaluative claim about the relative worth of meditation subjects (P03 has already shown that *sīlānussati* performs a function within access-level concentration that absorption could not perform), nor is it a hierarchical ranking. It is structural transparency: the object-shape of the chosen subject is the ceiling-shape of the resulting concentration. The object-structure constraint is the universal realisation-constraint underlying the forty-*kammaṭṭhāna* taxonomy. --- ## VI. Conclusion ### 6.1 The natural emergence from ethical conduct to concentration The closing reflection returns to the chain Kumārajīva preserved in his translation of the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra* at §3.7: from ethical conduct to non-remorse to joy to bliss to one-mind to true wisdom to disenchantment to dispassion to liberation to *nibbāna*. The Pāli parallel at AN 11.1 carries the same eleven links in the same order. The structural feature of the chain that bears on the present paper's closing is the connective particle "because" (Chinese 故, Pāli implicit in the verb-form) at each link. The mind that does not regret yields joy *because* the absence of remorse is the natural ground for joy; the mind that holds joy yields one-mind *because* the unified composure of joy is the natural ground for unification; the one-mind yields true wisdom *because* unified attention is the natural ground for seeing things as they are. The chain does not advance by force. Each link emerges from its predecessor as the predecessor's natural ripening. This is the doctrinal frame that closes Part I of the SĪLA volume. Mental one-pointedness is not extracted from the mind by technique; it is what arises when the conditions that precede it have themselves arisen. The conditions that precede it are exactly those Part I has laid down — the three axes of ethical conduct (P01), the eight virtues that constitute stream-entry (P02), the reflexive recollection of one's own already-cultivated ethical conduct (P03), and now the structural understanding of the object on which mental one-pointedness rests (P04). The contemporary contemplative culture's tendency to present absorption as a technical attainment to be achieved by sufficient effort runs against the grain of this chain. The chain says: ethical conduct yields non-remorse, non-remorse yields joy, joy yields tranquility, tranquility yields bliss, bliss yields one-mind. The one-mind is not pushed for; it is grown from the conditions beneath it. Forced concentration arises where the conditions beneath it have been bypassed. Read in this light, the five-fold *Saṃyukta-āgama* phrase 內淨一心 — inner-purified one-mind — recovers its precise weight. The "inner purity" (內淨, *ajjhattaṁ sampasādanaṁ*) is the precondition that ethical conduct generates; the "one-mind" (一心) is what naturally arises on that ground. The two halves of the four-character phrase are not two parallel descriptions; they are condition and consequence, captured in a fourth-century translator's choice with structural precision. ### 6.2 Part I's structural seal The four papers of Part I now stand as a four-step structural progression: the three axes of ethical conduct (P01), the eight virtues as stream-entry attributes (P02), the eight virtues as recollection-objects (P03), and the universal object-structure constraint that places *sīlānussati*'s ceiling in its appropriate context within the full forty-*kammaṭṭhāna* taxonomy (P04). The structure is concentric: P01 names ethical conduct, P02 places ethical conduct as character, P03 reads ethical conduct as recollection-object, P04 reads the recollection-object as one structural shape within a universal partition. Part I's closing brings the chain from the particularity of *sīla* through to the universal structural constraint that lets the volume's later parts proceed: with the partition in place, Parts II through VIII can take up their respective subjects without further argument about the structural status of the underlying mental factor. ### 6.3 The SAMĀDHI forward link The SAMĀDHI volume inherits, from the present paper, the universal-realisation constraint as upstream doctrinal background. The operational specifics of individual meditation subjects — how the earth *kasiṇa* disk is prepared, how the breath is held at the touch-point, how the body-parts are visualised, how the four immeasurables are extended, how the impurity contemplations are conducted, how the recollection of the Buddha through the ten epithets is sequenced, how the nine successive resting-states (*navānupubba-vihāra*) are entered — all belong to that next volume's main scene. The present paper is structurally upstream of those practical specifications. A practitioner reading the SAMĀDHI volume should already know, from this paper, why their chosen subject has the ceiling it has; that knowledge frees the practical engagement from the false question of why a given subject is not yielding more than it structurally can. ### 6.4 A single image, in closing The Chinese word 一心 — one-mind — has carried this paper's argument across two languages and five centuries of translation work. It is the *Āgama*-translator's rendering of *cetaso ekodibhāvaṁ*; it is the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra*'s rendering of *samādhi* within the chain from ethical conduct to *nibbāna*; it is the *Vimuttimagga*'s rendering of the morally-neutral concentration-factor; it is the precursor to Xuanzang's seventh-century crystallisation 心一境性. The three characters carry, across all four registers, the same structural intuition: a mind whose attention rests on a single object, undistracted, undivided. When the object has the shape that admits refinement, the one-mind grows into absorption. When the object has the shape that admits only steady attention, the one-mind rests at access. The choice of object is the choice of altitude. The conditions that produce the one-mind in either form are the same conditions: ethical conduct, freedom from remorse, joy, tranquility, bliss. The one-mind is natural emergence on those conditions. That is the closing image of Part I, and the doctrinal threshold from which SAMĀDHI proceeds. --- ## Footnotes [^1]: *Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta*, DN 22 §858–868, and the mirror passage in *Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta*, MN 10. Pāli text from the Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka Buddhavasse 2500 edition (public domain), collated against the local Pāli vault file (mirror passage), verification 17 May 2026. [^2]: Sujato, Bhante, trans., DN 22, in *Long Discourses* (SuttaCentral, public-domain release). The mirror rendering for MN 10 is identical in the relevant phrase. [^3]: *Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra* (T1579), attributed to Maitreya and Asaṅga, trans. Xuanzang, *Taishō* vol. 30, fascicle 11. Collated against CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka T30n1579. [^4]: *Mahānāmasutta*, AN 6.10 (PTS AN iii 285ff), with mirror at *Paṭhamamahānāma*, AN 11.11 (PTS AN v 328). Pāli text from the Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka Buddhavasse 2500 edition (public domain), collated against the local Pāli vault file (closing cascade) and the AN 11.11 mirror at lines 122–130, verification 17 May 2026. The same five-step ascending chain appears six times in the canonical pericope, once at the close of each of the six recollections; the cascade's structural significance for the canonical articulation of the path from ethical conduct to concentration was already adopted in P03 §IV and is here generalised. AN 4.14 (*Saṁvarasutta*) places the concentration-factor *samādhi-sambojjhaṅga* as the sixth of the seven awakening-factors, fixing one-pointedness as a structural component of the *bodhi-pakkhiya* architecture. [^5]: *Saṃyukta-āgama* (T0099), trans. Guṇabhadra, *Taishō* vol. 2. The five attested locations of the phrase 內淨一心 within Guṇabhadra's translation are: fascicle 14 lines 347–349 (Susīma dialogue); fascicle 17 lines 627–630 (food-and-no-food material on dependent arising); fascicle 18 lines 590–599 (Mahāmaudgalyāyana noble-silence episode); fascicle 21 line 597 (Citra householder petition); fascicle 31 line 86 (five-aggregates contemplation). All five collated against CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka T02n0099 and the local vault files, verification 17 May 2026. Guṇabhadra's translation activity in the Liu-Song court is generally dated to the Yuanjia reign-period (元嘉, 424–453), with the *Saṃyukta-āgama* translation completed approximately 435–443 CE. [^6]: *Madhyama Āgama* (T0026), trans. Saṅghadeva, *Taishō* vol. 1, fascicle 25. Collated against CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka T01n0026. Saṅghadeva's translation activity in the Eastern Jin period is dated to the Taiyuan reign-period (太元, 376–397), with the *Madhyama Āgama* translation completed approximately 397–398 CE. [^7]: The five Pāli targets — MN 44 *Cūḷavedalla*, SN 48.9–10 *Samādhindriya*, DN 33 *Saṅgīti*, AN 4.41 *Samādhibhāvanā*, and AN 5.27 *Samādhi* — are cited here by PTS reference only. The present author's working Pāli corpus does not contain these loci, and the discipline of citing only what can be verified directly precludes any verbatim Pāli reconstruction from memory or from secondary paraphrase. The cited witnesses stand as known canonical loci for the abhidharmic embedding of *ekaggatā*; readers seeking primary text should consult Bhikkhu Bodhi's translations (Bodhi 2009 for MN 44; Bodhi 2000 for SN 48.9–10; Walshe 1995 for DN 33; Bodhi 2012 for AN 4.41 and AN 5.27), each of which gives the Pāli alongside the English with substantial editorial introduction. [^8]: *Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra* (T1579), trans. Xuanzang, *Taishō* vol. 30, fascicle 11. Collated against CBETA T30n1579. Xuanzang's translation activity following his 645 return from India is variously dated; the *Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra* translation is generally placed in the years 646–648. [^9]: *Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra* (T1579), fascicle 11. Collated against CBETA T30n1579. The four-*jhāna* five-factor structure is repeated, with consistent factor enumeration, at *Prakaraṇāryavācā-śāstra* (*Xianyang shengjiao lun*, T1602, attributed to Asaṅga, trans. Xuanzang), fascicle 19, providing an internal Yogācāra cross-witness to the analysis. [^10]: *Abhidharma-samuccaya-vyākhyā* (T1606), Sthiramati's elaboration of Asaṅga's *Abhidharma-samuccaya*, trans. Xuanzang, *Taishō* vol. 31, fascicle 9. Collated against CBETA T31n1606. The three-fold classification — *pratipakṣa-aṅga* (counteraction-limb), *anuśaṃsa-aṅga* (benefit-limb), and *svabhāva-aṅga* (intrinsic-nature limb) — is Sthiramati's commentarial structural analysis, not a sutta-layer term; the Sanskrit reconstructions of the three terms follow standard scholarly conventions. [^11]: *Abhidharma-samuccaya* (T1605), Asaṅga, trans. Xuanzang, *Taishō* vol. 31, fascicle 5. The four bases of supernormal power (*cattāro iddhipādā*) — desire (*chanda*), effort (*viriya*), mind (*citta*), and investigation (*vīmaṃsā*) — are placed within the third group of the thirty-seven aids to awakening; the fascicle-5 passage marks their convergence on mental one-pointedness as the developed terminus. [^12]: *Vimuttimagga* (T1648), attributed to Upatissa, trans. Saṅghapāla, *Taishō* vol. 32, fascicle 1. Collated against the source XML file at lines 939–940 (Taishō page locator 0407b13–14), verification 17 May 2026. The Pāli original of the *Vimuttimagga* (*Vimuttimagga*) is no longer extant; the Chinese translation by Saṅghapāla, completed in the early sixth century under the Liang, preserves the treatise. Its sectarian affiliation is generally placed within a Theravāda-adjacent abhidhammic tradition (the Abhayagirivāsin school is one candidate). The treatise is broadly understood as a precursor to Buddhaghosa's *Visuddhimagga*, with which it shares substantial structural parallels. [^13]: *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra* (T1509), attributed to Nāgārjuna, trans. Kumārajīva, *Taishō* vol. 25, fascicle 13. Collated against CBETA T25n1509. Kumārajīva's translation activity in Chang'an under the Later Qin court is dated to 401–413 CE. The chain reproduces, link for link, the eleven-fold canonical sequence of AN 11.1 (*Kimatthiyasutta*): *sīla* → *avippaṭisāra* → *pāmojja* → *pīti* / *passaddhi* (folded by Kumārajīva into 喜樂) → *sukha* → *samādhi* (rendered 一心) → *yathābhūta-ñāṇa* (rendered 實智) → *nibbidā* → *virāga* → *vimutti* → *nibbāna*. The chain stands approximately one and a half centuries earlier than Xuanzang's seventh-century standardisation of 心一境性 and witnesses the structural identity of the doctrine across Mādhyamika and Yogācāra translation venues. [^14]: The three-stage progression of signs — *parikamma-nimitta* (preparatory sign), *uggaha-nimitta* (acquired sign), and *paṭibhāga-nimitta* (counterpart sign) — is laid out at *Visuddhimagga* Chapter IV in the exposition of the earth *kasiṇa*. The present paper cites by chapter-section name rather than by paragraph number: the relevant exposition is in the section on the progression of the meditation sign within the earth *kasiṇa* chapter. Paragraph-level citation pending physical-text consultation with Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli's English translation, *The Path of Purification* (Buddhist Publication Society, 4th ed., 1979). The terminology of the three stages is Buddhaghosa's; the underlying structural intuition, that the mental image is progressively refined from a perceptually-grounded representation to a luminous and feature-free mental form, is already implicit in the canonical four-*jhāna* pericope's description of the second-*jhāna* "mind at one." The exposition is paraphrased rather than directly quoted on account of the GRETIL Pāli text's publication-restricted licence; the underlying Pāli terminology is preserved here in italicised form. [^15]: *Saṃyukta-āgama* (T0099), trans. Guṇabhadra, *Taishō* vol. 2, fascicle 26, sūtra 647. The Pāli parallel is *Saṃyutta Nikāya* 48.10 (PTS SN v 197), cited here by PTS reference only on the same grounds noted at footnote [^7]; the abstract-factor definition of the concentration-faculty as *cittass'ekaggatā* is well-attested across Pāli abhidhammic literature. The two formulations — one experiential, one analytic — are not in contradiction; they are two complementary canonical strategies for defining the concentration-faculty, witnessing the underlying doctrinal content from two structurally different angles. --- ## References ### Primary Sources - *Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna-sutta*, DN 22 (PTS DN ii 290ff). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. - *Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta*, MN 10 (PTS MN i 55ff). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. - *Saṅgīti-sutta*, DN 33 (PTS DN iii 207ff). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. [Cited by PTS reference only; primary text not held in the present author's working corpus.] - *Cūḷavedalla-sutta*, MN 44 (PTS MN i 301). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. [PTS-only citation.] - *Samādhindriya-sutta*, SN 48.9–10 (PTS SN v 197–198). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. [PTS-only citation.] - *Saṁvarasutta*, AN 4.14. Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. - *Samādhibhāvanā-sutta*, AN 4.41 (PTS AN ii 44). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. [PTS-only citation.] - *Samādhi-sutta*, AN 5.27 (PTS AN iii 24). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. [PTS-only citation.] - *Mahānāmasutta*, AN 6.10 (PTS AN iii 285ff). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. - *Kimatthiyasutta*, AN 11.1 (PTS AN v 1–2). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. - *Paṭhamamahānāma*, AN 11.11 (PTS AN v 328). Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka public-domain edition. - Sujato, Bhante, trans. *Long Discourses (Dīgha Nikāya)*, *Middle Discourses (Majjhima Nikāya)*, and *Numbered Discourses (Aṅguttara Nikāya)*. SuttaCentral, public domain. - Buddhaghosa. *Visuddhimagga*, Chapter III *Kammaṭṭhāna-niddesa*, Chapter IV *Paṭhavī-kasiṇa-niddesa*, and Chapter VII §4 *Sīlānussati-niddesa*. Cited by paraphrase via Ñāṇamoli's translation (below); chapter-section citation only, paragraph numbering pending physical consultation with the BPS edition. - 求那跋陀羅 (Guṇabhadra), trans. *Saṃyukta-āgama* (T0099). *Taishō* vol. 2. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka. - 瞿曇僧伽提婆 (Saṅghadeva), trans. *Madhyama Āgama* (T0026). *Taishō* vol. 1. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka. - 鳩摩羅什 (Kumārajīva), trans. *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra* (T1509), attributed to Nāgārjuna. *Taishō* vol. 25. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka. - 玄奘 (Xuanzang), trans. *Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra* (T1579), attributed to Maitreya and Asaṅga. *Taishō* vol. 30. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka. - 玄奘 (Xuanzang), trans. *Prakaraṇāryavācā-śāstra* (*Xianyang shengjiao lun*, T1602), attributed to Asaṅga. *Taishō* vol. 31. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka. - 玄奘 (Xuanzang), trans. *Abhidharma-samuccaya* (T1605), attributed to Asaṅga. *Taishō* vol. 31. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka. - 玄奘 (Xuanzang), trans. *Abhidharma-samuccaya-vyākhyā* (T1606), attributed to Sthiramati. *Taishō* vol. 31. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka. - 僧伽婆羅 (Saṅghapāla), trans. *Vimuttimagga* (T1648), attributed to Upatissa. *Taishō* vol. 32. CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka. ### Modern Scholarship - Anālayo, Bhikkhu. *Satipaṭṭhāna: The Direct Path to Realization*. Cambridge: Windhorse, 2003. - Anālayo, Bhikkhu. *Saṃyukta-āgama Studies*. Taipei: Dharma Drum, 2015. - Bodhi, Bhikkhu, trans. *The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Saṃyutta Nikāya*. Boston: Wisdom, 2000. - Bodhi, Bhikkhu, trans. *The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya* (with Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli). Boston: Wisdom, 1995; rev. ed. 2009. - Bodhi, Bhikkhu, trans. *The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha: A Complete Translation of the Aṅguttara Nikāya*. Boston: Wisdom, 2012. - Cousins, Lance S. "Buddhist Jhāna: Its Nature and Attainment According to the Pāli Sources." *Religion* 3, no. 1 (1973): 115–131. [Cited in §IV.2 in passing reference only, via Gethin 1992; not directly consulted.] - Gethin, Rupert. *The Buddhist Path to Awakening: A Study of the Bodhi-Pakkhiyā Dhammā*. Leiden: Brill, 1992; reprinted Oxford: Oneworld, 2001. - Gethin, Rupert. *The Foundations of Buddhism*. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. - Ñāṇamoli, Bhikkhu, trans. *The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga)*. 4th ed. Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1979. - Walshe, Maurice, trans. *The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Dīgha Nikāya*. Boston: Wisdom, 1995. ### Sūtra and Śāstra Index - T0026: *Madhyama Āgama* (Sarvāstivāda-related Chinese rendering, trans. Saṅghadeva, Eastern Jin, c. 397–398). - T0099: *Saṃyukta-āgama* (Sarvāstivāda-related Chinese rendering, trans. Guṇabhadra, Liu-Song, c. 435–443). - T1509: *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra* (Mādhyamika; attributed to Nāgārjuna; trans. Kumārajīva, Later Qin, c. 401–413). - T1579: *Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra* (Yogācāra; attributed to Maitreya and Asaṅga; trans. Xuanzang, Tang, c. 646–648). - T1602: *Prakaraṇāryavācā-śāstra* (*Xianyang shengjiao lun*; Yogācāra; attributed to Asaṅga; trans. Xuanzang). - T1605: *Abhidharma-samuccaya* (Yogācāra abhidharma; attributed to Asaṅga; trans. Xuanzang). - T1606: *Abhidharma-samuccaya-vyākhyā* (Yogācāra abhidharma; Sthiramati's commentary on T1605; trans. Xuanzang). - T1648: *Vimuttimagga* (Theravāda-related; attributed to Upatissa; trans. Saṅghapāla, Liang, early 6th c.). --- ## Cross-References ### Within-Volume Continuity - **SILA P03** *Sīlānussati: Sīla as an Object of Recollection* — direct predecessor; supplies the two reasons (*gambhīratā* and *nānappakāra-guṇānussaraṇa-adhimuttatā*) that the present paper generalises into the categorical object-structure constraint. §V completes P03's special-case-to-universal-rule progression. - **SILA P02** *Ariyakanta-sīla as the Fourth Sotāpattiyaṅga* — the eight virtues read on the subject-side (P02) and on the object-side (P03) now form, together with the present paper's universal structural reading (P04), the three-step structural progression of Part I. - **SILA P01** *What Sīla Actually Means* — the three-axis foundation (*sīla*, *saṃvara*, *vinaya*) referenced at §I.5 in the architectural positioning of the four-paper Part I structure; the *vinaya* axis remains the structural background for the moral-neutrality discussion of §V.4. ### Within-Volume Forward Links - **SILA Part II** (forthcoming; P05 *The Eightfold Path's Three Ethical Limbs*) — Part I's four-paper foundation closes here; Part II opens with the three ethical limbs of the noble eightfold path (*sammā-vācā*, *sammā-kammanta*, *sammā-ājīva*) read as path-elements rather than as constraint-list. - **SILA Parts IV–V** (forthcoming; the three pure precepts of the Mahāyāna and the precept-substance question) — the present paper's object-structure argument supplies the Pāli-side analytical foundation on which the later Mahāyāna interiorisation of *sīla* and the Chinese precept-substance ontology will build. - **SILA Part VI** (forthcoming; the twelve great vows of Bhaiṣajyaguru) — the universal-realisation constraint articulated here is one of the structural modes within which the support-conditions for ethical conduct in the Bhaiṣajyaguru material are to be read. ### Cross-Volume Forward Links - **SAMĀDHI volume** — the present paper hands forward the entire operational layer of the forty *kammaṭṭhāna* (individual *kasiṇa* training stages, the practical specifications of the counterpart-sign progression, the operational specifics of individual *jhāna*-attainment) to the next volume's main scene. The present paper establishes the *classification* and the *structural argument*; SAMĀDHI develops the *practice*. - **NIAN P03** *The Six Recollections* — sister architectural treatment of the six-*anussati* frame in Volume I; the present paper generalises the object-multiplicity-as-ceiling structural finding beyond the six recollections to all forty *kammaṭṭhāna*. ### Octalogy Relation (sister series) The present paper does not advance any Octalogy-side argument; the Octalogy is sealed. SĪLA Part I (P01–P04) closes here with the universal object-structure argument in place; Part II will open onto the *Āgama*-side practical ethical structures (the eightfold-path three *sīla*-limbs, the five precepts, the *uposatha*, *sīla-gandha*). --- *Paper:* SILA-P04 · *Ekaggatā*: Single-Pointedness and the Object-Structure Argument · **SĪLA · Part I · Pāli Roots** *Author:* 釋慧鏡 (Shi Huijing) · *Project:* 指月 / Pointing-at-the-Moon · *Series:* The Six Practice Gates （六行門） *License:* CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 *CBETA collation:* Citations from the *Saṃyukta Āgama* (T0099), the *Madhyama Āgama* (T0026), the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra* (T1509, fascicle 13), the *Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra* (T1579, fascicle 11), the *Prakaraṇāryavācā-śāstra* (T1602, fascicle 19), the *Abhidharma-samuccaya* (T1605, fascicle 5), the *Abhidharma-samuccaya-vyākhyā* (T1606, fascicle 9), and the *Vimuttimagga* (T1648, fascicle 1) have been collated against the CBETA Electronic Tripiṭaka 2024 edition. Pāli citations follow the SuttaCentral Mahāsaṅgīti Tipiṭaka Buddhavasse 2500 edition (DN 22, MN 10, AN 6.10, AN 11.1), with PTS pagination dual-tracked. *Visuddhimagga* Chapters III, IV, and VII are cited at chapter-section level only; paragraph numbering pending physical consultation with the Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli BPS edition. The original Pāli of the *Visuddhimagga* is held by the GRETIL repository under a publication-restricted licence and is not embedded here. *Repository:* https://github.com/pointing-at-the-moon/six-practice-gates