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Dharmakirti's Attitude Towards Omniscience
241
You have refuted the existence of God, but there is equal fault in your omniscient one, because if he is an authoritative person he must cognize every hidden object, and there is not any way of proving that one can become omniscient by some sort of mental development. There is no one who exerts himself in that method, because there is not the least bit of proof demonstrating that there is a cause generating (omniscience), nor does there exist anyone who strives for the sake of cognizing that.
Thus, it follows that one cannot accomplish omniscience by unimaginable mantras or medicines, because it would follow that one would be (an authority) regarding all external and internal objects, and so would be omniscient regarding all knowables. It follows that sense-cognition cannot cognize all hidden phenomena, because it is powerless to penetrate solid objects. It follows that mental cognition cannot be (omniscient ), because it follows on sense-cognition. It follows that even if the mind relies on scripture, it cannot cognize all hidden phenomena, because ( scripture ) is irrelevant to the categories (of reality), and even if it is (relevant) one will not cognize (those categories) perceptually.
Moreover, it follows that it is unacceptable that one cognize all (knowables) successively, because if that is the case, you must accept that there is an exhaustive limit (to phenomena ). If (all knowables are said to be) cognized simultaneously, it follows that there is a beginning to samsara, because such a cognition is completely limiting.
One cannot cognize the existence of such an omniscient one through reasoning, because there are no reasons apart from words; if all persons are unmistaken regarding one word, or if a person is unmistaken regarding all (words), then it follows that those are omniscient. If it is proven by perception, then the one (so proving) must also be omniscient, for without oneslf cognizing all knowables, one cannot ascertain: "This being cognizes all knowables" (In short) there is neither a cause generating omniscience nor a reason demonstrating (its existence).7
Dharmakirti's commentarial successors, of course, believe that omniscience can be known inferentially, but DharmakIrti himself, when faced with criticisms of omniscience does not defend it, rather, he sidesteps the criticism and says that he is concerned with criteria of authoritativeness, for which what is needed is not extrasensory perception, but efficacious religious knowledge.
Still, as "modest" as is Dharmakirti's criterion of religious authoritativeness, he himself is quite aware of the difficulties involved in trying to demonstrate that a particular being, the Buddha, in fact satisfactorily meets this criterion. As Mi pham, a 19th-century Tibetan rNying ma pa commentator on the Pramaṇavärttika, succin
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