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(1665)* ( Gautama, the stream is beginningless, because body and karma are related to each other as cause and effect, as the seed and the sprout are.
(1666) Hence, because of the relation of instrumental cause and effect between karma and body, accept a doer (agent) over and above these, like the potter with respect to stick and jar. (And that agent or doer is the Atman or soul).
(1667,-8,-9,-70 same as Gāthās 1567-1570. In Gäthä 1567, the reading is ‘dehassatthi vihāyā”).
(1671) The one who remembers the (previous) birth (i.e. existence) could not have perished, because there is remembrance, as the one who remembers what happened in childhood, or as the man who remembers in a foreign country what happened in his own country (cannot be said to have perished).
(1672) If you believe that even though momentary it does remember by virtue of the stream of (point-instants of) consciousness, still the stream of (point-instants of) conciousness is established as other than the body.
(1673) And knowledge is not absolutely momentary because there is remembrance of what was previously cognised. What is momentary does not remember what happened in the past like one who dies immediately after birth.
(1674) For him who regards consciousness as one (i.e. without another to help it), as having one object and as momentary, the knowledge of all momentary objects (i.e. the momentariness of all objects) can never be possible.
(1675) How possibly will that which is confined to its own object and which perishes immediately after its origination, cognise momentariness, (essencelessness, painfulness), etc. which pertain to the objects of a great number of cognitions.
*Same as Gathā 1639 and Gātha 1813.
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