 First, Vasubandhu defines the dependent nature as: (a) one that exists due to being causally conditioned (pratyayādhīnavṛttitvāt), and (b) it is the basis of “what appears” (yat khyāti) mistakenly in our cognition as conventionally real, it is the basis for the “unreal conceptual fabrication” (asatkalpa) which is the phenomenological basis of the appearance of reified subjects and objects ([TSN] 2 Sems tsam shi 10a). The implications of the Yogācārin expression “what appears” to describe the dependent nature are therefore twofold: (a) that the things that appear in our cognitions are exclusively the representations, which are the manifest forms of the subliminal impressions, and (b) that the entire web of conventional reality, which presents itself to our cognitions phenomenologically in various ways, is exclusively the appearance of those representations. Apart from those representations, consciousnesses, which appear to be external objects, there is no conventionally real external content which corresponds to what appears.