Aptamimansa Critique of an Authority Bhasya

Author(s): Samantbhadracharya, Akalankadev, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: Jagruti Dilip Sheth Dr

Page 28

INTRODUCTION
Section 1
In this section the problem discussed is whether a real entity is existent or non-existent by nature. The thesis asserts that a real entity is absolutely existent, meaning thereby that it exists at all place and time. The antithesis asserts that a real entity is absolutely non-existent, meaning thereby that it exists at no place or time. The synthesis asserts that a real entity is somehow existent and somehow non-existent, meaning thereby that it exists at its own place and time while it does not exist at what is not its own place and time. It cannot be said with certainty as to which historically evolved schools (if any at all) Samantabhadra has in mind as the respective proponents of the thesis and the antithesis in question. For the transcendentalist schools of Indian philosophy have repudiated the reality of the empirical world that occupies space-time and they have instead posited the reality of a trans-empirical world that occupies no space-time. Hence insofar as they maintain that one changeless and differenceless trans-empirical reality exists where the spatio-temporal world seems to be existing they might be said to endorse the spirit of the thesis in question; on the other hand, insofar as they maintain that the trans-empirical reality occupies no space-time they might be said to endorse the spirit of the antithesis in question. But the difficulty is that the advocate of the thesis, inasmuch as he says that a real entity exists at all place and time, does not seem to be of the view that a real entity exists beyond space-time; on the other hand, the advocate of the antithesis, even while submitting that a real entity exists at no place or time, does not expressly say that a real entity exists beyond space-time. Maybe, Samantabhadra was simply entertaining the logical possibility of someone upholding the position that a thing exists everywhere and always as also that of someone upholding the position that a thing exists nowhere and never; for these precisely can be two rival positions whose synthesis is represented by Samantabhadra's own position that a thing exists where and when it does while it does not exist where and when it does not. But it is also likely that Samantabhadra considered the Sankhya philosopher to be the advocate of the thesis in question and the transcendentalist (of any hue) to be the advocate of the antithesis in question. For it is a Sankhya position that a thing that is produced at some place and time was already in existence at that place and time, and this position coupled with the rather plausible supposition that it
27