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CHAPTER III
103
(absolute transitoriness), existence after death etc. is impossible. As there will be no Pratyabhijñā etc. there cannot be any beginning of any effect leading to any fruit.
COMMENTARY This verse is to refute the view of the Buddhists who hold the transitory nature of knowledge. For, to accept this transitory nature, we shall have to deny memory etc. Because, as soon as knowledge disappears, being transitory, it cannot remember what it had experienced before and comparing it what it experiences now. It cannot say that it remembers the same as experienced before. Existence after death is accepted to be regulated by the action and intentions of a being in this life. But if everything disappears as transitory, such actions and intentions cannot be causes in regulating rebirth which is accepted by the Buddhist philosophy. Innumerable stories are current in Buddhistic literature regarding the previous lives of Buddha.
If a man does not remember his previous experience, how can he act to satisfy his desire by doing necessary acts. One collects firewood, cooking pot, rice and water, wishing to cook food. Without pratyabhijñā (memory) this action (kāryārambha) can never take place, and the fruits of the act (phala) can consequently never happen.
यद्यसत् सर्वथा कार्यं तन्मा जनि खपुष्पवत् । मोपादाननियामोऽभून्माश्वासः कार्यजन्मनि ॥42॥ yadyasat sarvathā kāryam tanmā jani khapușpa-vat, mopādānaniyāmo'bhūn-māśvāsaḥ kāryajanmani.
42. If the effect be always non-existent, it cannot in that case ever happen, (as) a flower in the sky (can never get into existence). The rule of (existence according to) material will not in that case exist) and there will be no expectation in the rising of the effect.
