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is existent is momentary (yat sat tat sarvam kṣanikam-Hetubindu, p. 44; kṣanikaḥ sarva-saṁskārāḥ-All things are momentary). But how possibly could they establish this? If all the momentary things could be brought together, then alone could there be a cognition of all of them as being momentary; again, this knowledge could not have been originated by all the things, because the Buddhists believe that one cognition can have but one object. If there could be simultaneous cognitions of the momentariness of all individual things and if the soul were to assimilate them this could be possible, but the Buddhists do not accept the simultaneous origination of a number of cognitions of all objects. Hence with their tenets, it is not possible to have knowledge of the momentariness of all the objects of the world. Even if knowledge being one and of one object, were not momentary it perishing immediately after its origination could have been possible to have this knowledge of momentariness of objects; but knowledge too, in their view, is momentary. Looking to these difficulties, knowledge should not be accepted as momentary. And being a quality it requires an appropriate substratum viz. the soul. This proves the existence of the soul as distinct from the body (1674).
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There would be still another difficulty in the Buddhist view. A cognition, according to it, is confined to its own object, i. e. it can have but one object. If so, how could such a cognition ever tell us of the attributes momentariness, essencelessness, painfulness, etc. of the objects of a great number of cognitions? Thus it is not all possible to have the knowledge of the momentariness of things (1675).
Jain Education International
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It can be argued that though cognition is one, of one object only and momentary, still it can know the momentary nature of all cognitions and objects on the basis of the inference grounded on the nature of itself and its own objects, and thus there is no difficulty whatsoever. To this the reply is that such an inference would be fallacious, for only a thing which is known to exist can be the subject of an inference (tatra pakṣaḥ prasiddho dharmi Nyaya-praveśa, p. 1); while the very existence of the
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