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VEDANTA-SÛTRAS.
indeterminate? Observation shows that only when a course of action is known to have a definite result people set about it without hesitation. Hence a man who proclaims a doctrine of altogether indefinite contents does not deserve to be listened to any more than a drunken man or a madman.Again, if we apply the Gaina reasoning to their doctrine of the five categories, we have to say that on one view of the matter they are five and on another view they are not five; from which latter point of view it follows that they are either fewer or more than five. Nor is it logical to declare the categories to be indescribable. For if they are so, they cannot be described; but, as a matter of fact, they are described so that to call them indescribable involves a contradiction. And if you go on to say that the categories on being described are ascertained to be such and such, and at the same time are not ascertained to be such and such, and that the result of their being ascertained is perfect knowledge or is not perfect knowledge, and that imperfect knowledge is the opposite of perfect knowledge or is not the opposite; you certainly talk more like a drunken or insane man than like a sober, trustworthy person. If you further maintain that the heavenly world and final release exist or do not exist and are eternal or non-eternal, the absence of all determinate knowledge which is implied in such statements will result in nobody's acting for the purpose of gaining the heavenly world and final release. And, moreover, it follows from your doctrine that soul, nonsoul, and so on, whose nature you claim to have ascertained, and which you describe as having existed from all eternity, relapse all at once into the condition of absolute indetermination.—As therefore the two contradictory attributes of being and non-being cannot belong to any of the categories
-being excluding non-being and vice versâ non-being excluding being—the doctrine of the Arhat must be rejected. -The above remarks dispose likewise of the assertions made by the Gainas as to the impossibility of deciding whether of one thing there is to be predicated oneness or plurality, permanency or non-permanency, separateness or non-separateness, and so on.—The Gaina doctrine that
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