The four types of food on which beings subsist: coarse food, the food of contact, the food of volition, and the food of joy.

The four kinds of sustenance are the sustenance of material ingestion, the sustenance of contact, the sustenance of will, and the sustenance of consciousness.

These comprise: (1) the nourishment of food (kavaḍīkāra, kham), (2) the nourishment of sensory contact (sparśa, reg pa), (3) the nourishment of mentation (cetanā, sems pa), and (4) the nourishment of consciousness (vijñāna, rnam par shes pa), the first two of which are directed toward the present life and the last two to the subsequent life. See Negi 1993–2005: p. 5382 and Zhang Yisun et al: p. 2457.