Enlightened Vision of the Self

Author(s): Akalankadev, Devendra K Goyal
Publisher: Radiant Publishers New Delhi

Page 24

THE ENLIGHTENED VISION OF THE SELF
recognition, e.g., this house as being the one that I visited yesterday.” 16 There will also be no knowledge of similarity on the same principle. If nothing remains stable, the persistence of human personality after death, which is accepted by the Buddhists, becomes impossible by their own doctrine.1?
According to Buddhism, everything (savam) is impermanent (anichcha), soulless or substancesless (anatta); there is nothing permanent, fixed or stable. Reality is a series of discrete moments without the thread of an inner connectedness. What is felt is always the moment, absolutely distinct and discrete from another moment. So no question of identity of one moment with another moment arises. Criticizing this Sautrantika (Buddhist) theory of flux, Nathmal Tatia points out:
In fact, a plurality of units without a binding nexus can never account for the unity felt in an entity. If an abiding unity is posited to connect and combine the different units, then recognition and also causality can be explained. This is the position of the Jaina philosopher who asserts that a reality is a permanent unity which runs through the changing moments that appear in it. The criterion of reality is thus continuity and change, that is to say, the flux and influx of states.
Causality, Tatia adds, is “as inexplicable in the theory of flux as it is in the theory of eternally unchanging cause”.18 Causal efficiency can neither be possible in the case of an absolutely momentary entity nor it can be possible in the case of an absolutely changeless (kutastha) entity. In this regard, Akalanka observes:
Reality cannot be absolutely eternal. If the reality is eternal, there can be no modification anywhere, there can be no cause or effect anywhere, and nowhere can there be valid knowledge or its result in the form of acceptance, rejection or indifference. Valid knowledge manifests reality. And reality is manifested by valid knowledge. If both valid knowledge and reality are eternal they cannot be related to each other as the manifester and the manifested.... If modification is real, reality cannot be eternal.