 While in the Theravada tradition, as well as in the earliest texts, the Pali Canon, matter is delineated as something external, that actually exists,  in the later schools, like the Yogacara school, Rūpa (matter) means both materiality and sensibility—it signifies, for example, a tactile object both insofar as that object is tactile and that it can be sensed.Rūpa is never a materiality which can be separated or isolated from cognizance; such a non-empirical category is incongruous in the context of early Buddhism.Rūpa is not a substratum or substance which has sensibility as a property.