Gandharavada

SR No.: 006739
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Esther A Solomon
Publisher: Gujarat Vidyasabha
Publication Year: 1966
Total Pages: 400
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

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the two cognitions be regarded as existing simultaneously that would conflict with their momentariness. Again, is this impression momentary or is it not? If it is momentary, it too, as shown above, cannot establish the momentariness of all; and if it is not momentary, that goes against the Buddhist view that everything is momentary. Thus even the introduction of the concept of vāsanā (impression) in the explanation does not help us to establish the momentariness of all things of the world (1677).
If while accepting that knowledge is momentary, the Buddhists also want the knowledge of the momentariness of all things, there would be a number of difficulties :
It will have to be accepted that for the knowledge of all the objects in the three worlds a number of cognitions can rise simultaneously and the existence of a permanent entity - soul - as one that can be the substratum of these cognitions and can remember the objects cognised by them, will have to be ac
One cognition will have to be accepted as having a number of objects,-which goes against the Buddhist view; (c) Cognition will have to be accepted as having a prolonged
existence (i. e. as non-momentary) so that it could cognise all the things one after another. Does this not amount to
the acceptance of atman or soul by a different name? (d) Buddhism would be throwing to the winds its doctrine
of pratītya-samutpăda (dependent origination) according to which there is no connection whatsoever between cause and effect; the cause does in no way persist in the effect. If this pratītya-samutpāda be accepted all the empirical behaviour-remembrance of past things, etc.-would be flouted as memory, etc. are possible only when there is a co-ordinating factor as the locus of past cognitions. Ātman (soul) can supply this void and we need not rue the loss of pratītya-samutpăda even here, for the Buddhist tenets themselves cannot sustain it. If Ātman (soul) is accepted as of the nature of origination, destruction, persistence, knowledge, none of these difficulties
.