(Sanskrit: “three forms of existence”), in Buddhist thought, the states of the real existence that appear to a person according to his stage of understanding. Together with the doctrine of storage consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna), it constitutes the basic theory of the Vijñānavāda (“Consciousness-affirming”) school of Buddhist philosophy. The trisvabhāva theory was first taught in the Prajñāpāramitā (“Perfection of Wisdom”) sutras, a group of Mahāyāna texts composed between the 1st century BC and the 3rd century AD, and was elaborated upon by the Vijñānavāda school.

The three forms of existence are:

(1) Parikalpita-svabhāva (“the form produced from conceptual construction”), generally accepted as true by common understanding or by convention of the unenlightened.

(2) Paratantra-svabhāva (“the form arising under certain conditions”), the real form of phenomenal existence free from verbal expression; the world of dependent origination (pratītya-samutpāda).

(3) Pariniṣpanna-svabhāva (“the form perfectly attained”), the ultimate truth of transcendental emptiness (śūnyatā).

Each of these three forms should not be regarded as independent existences but as the forms that appear to different individuals according to their existential attitudes toward reality. Through ultimate transcendental wisdom, which denies an illusional superimposition of the reality, a person comes to understand the essence of the phenomenal world as emptiness (śūnyatā)—i.e., as the form perfectly attained (pariniṣpanna-svabhāva). Thereupon one clearly sees the true nature of phenomena as it is without verbal fiction—i.e., in the form of paratantra-svabhāva. In short, paratantra is the pivot that transforms the illusion of parikalpita to the enlightenment of pariniṣpanna.

The trisvabhāva is inseparably connected with the practical purposes of Yogācāra (“Practice of Yoga”), as knowledge of the doctrine can enable one to break through the painful chain of transmigration and attain nirvana (the state of enlightenment).