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Roger Jackson
ctly notes, Dharmakīrti must demonstrate (A) that there is a cause for the Buddha's authoritativeness and (B) that there is a reason for asserting him to be authoritative. 68 (A) requires a demonstration that it is theoretically possible for someone to attain the unlimited development of mental qualities said to have been attained by the Buddha. (B) requires that the truths asserted by the Buddha be, in fact, true, i. e., uncontradicted by either perception or inference. Each of these, in turn, raises for Dharmakirti problems at least as intractable as those posed by omniscience, but he tackles them nonetheless, believing that both the Buddha's attainment and his assertions be rationally defensible.
(A) Dharmakirti quite correctly recognizes that in order to prove that there can exist a cause for attainments such as that claimed by the Buddha, he must demonstrate the existence of past and future lives, which, in turn, hinge on the establishment of a substantial dualism of mind and body. Dharmaksrti's, arguments which we do not have the space to review here, are ingenious, and deserve further consideration than philosophers heretofore have given them, but it is not entirely evident that Dharmak Irti does not beg the question, by assurning a definition of mind (i. e.. as clear and object-apprehending) that logically precludes its origination from matter. Furthermore, even if his arguments for past and future lives be accepted, Dharmakīrti still is forced in places to adduce as arguments specifically Buddhist ideas, e. g., that there exists a certain type of mental stability that is the condition for effortless, unlimited development of mental qualities; or that at death the thought of an ordinary, attached being will connect with a subsequent attached thought, while the thought of an arhat, who is detached, will have no result, and he will not take rebirth. The mind-body problem is not much closer to solution nowadays than it was in Dharmakirti's time (whatever the protestations from one camp or another that it has been either resolved or made to disappear by the expedient of declaring it meaningless); the assertion of one's own doctrines as part of a proof one's doctrines is-if not always circular-seldom very satisfactory.
(B) Dharmakirti further recognizes that if the Buddha is, in fact, authoritative, then what he says about what is to be attained and what avoided --the criterion of authoritativeness-must be true. In short, the four noble truths must be true. A proof of the reality of the four noble truths-on which DharmakIrti spends most of the second half of the “pramāṇasiddhi" chapter-raises further interesting problems. The most pivotal, perhaps, is the complex assertion that samsaric suffering has a specific identifiable cause, i. e., self-grasping; that there is a specific antidote to the cause, i. e., the wisdom that cognizes selflessness; and that the application of the antidote will remove the cause and the suffering that results from it. Though Dharmaksrti accepts the existence of yogic perception, and believes that it is, in fact, through yogic perception that one directly verifies the four noble truths, he does not make the mistake of appealing to yogic perception (i. e.. mystical experience) as a justification of the truth of the four noble truths.59 Rather, he seeks to show
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