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DHARMAPĀLA'S COMMENTARY
71
If you ask me : Well, there exists no second moon; how does one directly perceive the two images of the moon ? Let me explain this. Because of some potent force (s'akti) laid down within consciousness, it appears as though it is the consciousness endowed with the image of the second moon. Just as a man, while asleep, dreams that he actually sees many objects, and also imagines in dream that he discharges so many false acts ; so also he imagines another moon upon the single moon.
[30] Some philosophers say: When the eye-consciousness happens to exist simultaneously [with its alambana] and since it has been criticised that both these under such circumstances, arise in order, i.e. one after the other, immediately after these two images, a mental thought arises murmuring: 'I perceive the second moon.'
Some others say: It is due to a mistake in number 24 [of the two instead of one] in the moon, that mistake, too, happens out of the defect in the organ of the sight. If you do not admit the proposition of an external object, then the vision of gross form will be merely a perversive thought.
[The author says: ] Mental consciousness does not arise immediately after the eye-consciousness and its alambana coming into exisience [as you previously stated], but it does so only simultaneously and depending upon the images of these two. Then, [asks the opponent,] how does an understanding arise that I see the
23 See Pramāņavārtika, II, 294 : HAE autcm ( = #01197ca:) i 24 See Prakaraṇapañcikā, p. 38, verses 58-60.
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