Alamban Pariksha

Author(s): Dinnaga, Dharmapala, N Aiyaswami Shastri
Publisher: Adyar Library

Page 88

64
ĀLAMBANAPARIKȘĀ
consciousness? Yet there is already in the preceding moment the object-image. When this object-image is brought home in the self of consciousness just like an image in the mirror, it is considered that the consciousness has grasped its object, [and also that the latter has produced the former]. The self of the double atom does not represent the image reflected upon consciousness. If it does so, then we may consider the atom also to be its object.
“ Like the sense organ ". Though it serves as the cause, it becomes no object. If you accept that whichever is cause, is object, then the sense-faculty also could possibly become object. [It is also not possible to argue that mere causality is not criterion for its being object of consciousness, but a causal element which is endowed with the image felt in consciousness is so; because] it has already been stated that the reason, the possession of the image in consciousness suffers a fallacy of its being not established. Thus we have to concede that the mind, i.e. the preceding moment of consciousness serves not merely as cause [of the following moment of consciousness], but it appears both as the sense-faculty as well the image of the object.
If you establish as the cause what has been stated above, i.e., atomso; then, atoms being the cause, how does it follow that the same becomes object ? [If you say that the causality and objectivity are mutually concomitant and found invariably together]
19 Read in Sanskrit p. 25, line 16: afa petr[a] FTUA, etc.