Genuine Essence-Carrying Object and Essence-less Image-Only Object

When you go outside to bask in the sunlight, the sunlight you receive is a true object with substance (true bhavāṅga object), because it adds heat and energy to the body and supplements calcium, having an actual functional effect. Food and drink eaten into the stomach belong to the true object-with-substance category, because they replenish the body's energy, fill the stomach, and give a person vitality and physical strength. But the food and drink eaten in a dream has no filling effect; upon waking, the stomach still feels hungry. Food in a dream is a substanceless Image-Only Object, carrying no substance, and therefore has no actual functional effect. Likewise, food imagined in the mind also has no filling effect and cannot add energy to the body; it is likewise a substanceless Image-Only Object.

Some people, when making offerings to the Buddha, never use real objects; instead, they rely on food imagined by thought—substanceless Image-Only Objects—to make offerings to the Buddha. With no real objects, they do not have to give up any actual material things or money. Without giving, of course there is no return. If the imagined food cannot fill your own stomach and cannot be brought to your own mouth, could it possibly enter the Buddha's mouth and stomach? Using imagined food and drink for the ritual feeding of ghosts and spirits is also utterly insincere, requiring no giving of actual material things. Since imagined food and drink contain not the slightest real substance, offering it to others is the same as deceiving them; in future lives you yourself will likewise be deceived in this way—deceiving others is the same as deceiving oneself.