Aptamimansa Critique of an Authority Bhasya

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

Page 87

52
CRITIQUE OF AN AUTHORITY (iii) The following are the difficulties urged by Samantabhadra against the empiricist Buddhist's understanding of certain miscellaneous ontological and ethical phenomena : (a) if an effect is utterly different from its cause the mind which performs a good or bad act must be utterly different from the mind which allegedly reads the fr of this act; this means that the empiricist Buddhist is forced to explain away the causation in question; (b) the empiricist Buddhist's thesis on destruction being uncaused is particularly vulnerable; (c) since the empiricist Buddhist reduces all empirical phenomena into certain series and certain aggregates and since all series and all aggregates are according to him mere saṁvrtis or usages he is bound to explain away all empirical phenomena. Now, in view of what has already been said in connection with the empiricist Buddhist's understanding of causal phenomenon in general it should be easy to see how the first and the third of these difficulties can be met. But something remains to be said about the empiricist Buddhist's thesis on destruction being uncaused. The thesis was a rather intriguing way of expressing the idea that each and every empirical phenomenon is momentary by nature, an idea essentially acceptable also to the Jaina who would however precisely formulate his position by saying that each and every mode-aspect of each and every empirical phenomenon is momentary. An essentially different position was adopted by the Nyāya-Vaiseșika who was of the view that an empirical phenomenon need not be momentary either in its substance-aspect or in its mode-aspect. Samantabhadra's antiBuddhist arguments on the present question would better befit a NyāyaVaiseșika than a Jaina.
verses 55 विरोधान्नोभयैकात्म्यं स्याद्वादन्यायविद्विषाम् । अवाच्यतैकान्तेऽप्युक्तिर्नावाच्यमिति युज्यते ॥५५॥
The enemies of the logic of syādvāda can also not maintain that the two (viz. 'absolute permanence' and ‘absolute momentariness') characterize one and the same phenomenon, for such a position will be self-contradictory. And if they maintain that the phenomena that are there are absolutely indescribable, then even to say that a phenomenon is indescribable becomes an impossiblity on their part. (55)