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Executive Summary

Asaṅga’s Mahāyānasaṃgraha and Vasubandhu’s Trisvabhāvanirdeśa together teach that all dualistic projections arise through the imagined nature (parikalpita-svabhāva) overlaying the dependent nature (paratantra-svabhāva), and that the perfected nature (pariniṣpanna-svabhāva) is nothing more than the emptiness of the imagined within the dependent—a realization that dissolves both “subject” and “object.” In Asaṅga’s system, this culminates in the transformation of the basis (āśrayaparāvṛtti), by which the storehouse consciousness (ālayavijñāna)—the seed-repository of karmic impressions—“ceases as a receptacle” and “arises as mirror-like wisdom,” leaving no trace of duality. Vasubandhu’s thirty-eight verses famously distill this into four succinct stanzas that define the consummate nature as the eternal nonexistence of the way things falsely appear, with the very nonexistence of duality itself constituting nondual reality.

1. Three Natures in Asaṅga’s Mahāyānasaṃgraha

1.1 Paratantra-svabhāva (Dependent Nature)

Asaṅga teaches that the other-dependent pattern is “the above structure of consciousness as co-arising in an interplay between the container and the active consciousnesses and in the interplay between image and insight in thinking,” emphasizing that subject and object arise inseparably through conditions (Wikipedia).

1.2 Parikalpita-svabhāva (Imagined Nature)

The imagined pattern is “the failure to understand this basic structure and the consequent clinging to things as if they had enduring essences,” in which consciousness fabricates the duality of an “I” and external “things,” obscuring their interdependence (Wikipedia).

1.3 Pariniṣpanna-svabhāva (Perfected Nature)

The perfected pattern is defined by Paramārtha (via Keenan) as:

“The perfected pattern (pariniṣpanna-svabhāva)… is the absence of imagining in the other dependent pattern and the consequent recovery of its basic nature as other-dependent.” (Wikipedia).

2. Transformation of the Basis (āśrayaparāvṛtti)

Asaṅga devotes Chapters IX–X of the Mahāyānasaṃgraha to the transformation of the basis, first teaching “The Relinquishment That Is the Result of This Training” (nonabiding nirvāṇa) in Chapter IX and then “The Wisdom That Is the Result of This Training” in Chapter X—collectively, the conversion of the storehouse into liberated wisdom (Wikipedia, University of Chicago).
In this process, ālayavijñāna, which “stores impressions (vāsanās) from past experiences as the seeds (bīja) of future experiences,” is exhausted of its karmic seeds through practice, at which point “it ceases as a receptacle and arises as uncontaminated mirror-like wisdom” (Wikipedia, Buddha-Nature).
Chapter IX explicitly states that nonabiding nirvāṇa—the relinquishment of all clinging—is “the result of this training,” marking the end of dualistic seeds (Wikipedia).

3. Emptiness of Subject and Object in Vasubandhu’s Trisvabhāvanirdeśa

Vasubandhu’s Thirty-Eight Verses open with a call to deeply understand the three natures:

“The imagined, the other-dependent and the consummate—
These are the Three Natures
Which should be deeply understood.” (Tibetan Buddhism in the West)

He then defines the consummate nature in two pivotal verses:

Verse 3: “The eternal nonexistence
Of what appears in the way it appears…
Is known as the nature of the consummate.” (Tibetan Buddhism in the West)

Verse 4: “If anything appears, it is imagined.
The way it appears is as duality.
What is the consequence of its nonexistence?
The fact of nonduality!” (Tibetan Buddhism in the West)

Here Vasubandhu shows that the very nonexistence of subject-object duality is the consummate reality—no separate knower or known remains.

4. Authoritative Synthesis

Both Asaṅga and Vasubandhu root the perfected nature (pariniṣpanna-svabhāva) in the emptiness of the imagined within the dependent, a soteriological realization that dissolves both “subject” and “object” projections. As Ratnākaraśānti later summarizes, “the consummate nature is the dependent nature’s emptiness of the imagined nature,” binding Yogācāra’s theory into a coherent Middle Way (Wikipedia).
This insight underlies the famous slogan 一切唯心造 (“All is created solely by the mind”), not as a metaphysical claim about mind-substance but as an expedient pointer to the fact that liberation arises when the mind-only dream of duality has been fully cleared and nondual awareness stands forth unimpeded (Oxford Reference).

Key Takeaway:

• Pariniṣpanna-svabhāva is not a separate “fourth” realm but simply the dependent nature (paratantra) recognized free of imagined projections (parikalpita).

• Through āśrayaparāvṛtti, the storehouse consciousness transforms into mirror-like wisdom, leaving no trace of duality.

• Vasubandhu’s consummate nature is summed up as the eternal nonexistence of dualistic appearances, itself the foundation of nondual reality.