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302 Controversy between Dualists and Monists [CH. appearance is liable to contradiction in the context wherein it appears. It cannot be said that the above position does not carry us to a new point, since one existent entity may be known to be different from any other existent entity; for the negation here is not of any particular existence, but of existence as such. If it is possible to assert that there may be an entity which is neither existence nor non-existence, then that certainly would be a new proposition. Madhusūdana further points out that "existence" and "nonexistence" are used in their accepted senses and, both of them being unreal, the negation of either of them does not involve the affirmation of the other, and therefore the law of excluded middle is not applicable. When it is said that the indefinability consists in the fact that a thing is neither being nor non-being, that means simply that, all that can be affirmed or denied being unreal, neither of them can be affirmed; for what is in itself indescribable cannot be affirmed in any concrete or particularized form?
Vyāsa-tirtha contends that the inscrutable nature of existence and non-existence should not be a ground for calling them indefinable; for, if that were so, then even the cessation of avidyā, which is regarded as being neither existent nor non-existent nor existent-nonexistent nor indefinable, should also have been called indefinable. The reply of Madhusūdana to this is that the cessation of avidyā is called unique, because it does not exist during emancipation; he further urges that there is no incongruity in supposing that an entity as well as its negation (provided they are both unreal) may be absent in any other entity--this is impossible only when the positive and the negative are both real. Madhusūdana further says that being and non-being are not mutual negations, but exist in mutually negated areas. Being in this sense may be defined as the character of non-being contradicted, and non-being as incapability of appearing as being. It may be argued that in this sense the worldappearance cannot be regarded as different from both being and non-being. To this the reply is that by holding the view that being and non-being are not in their nature exclusive, in such a way that absence of being is called non-being and vice versa, but that the absence of one is marked by the presence of another, a possibility
i na ca tarhi sad-ādi-railaksanyoktiḥ katham tat-tat-pratiyogi-durnirūpatamātre prakatanāya, na hi starüpato durnirūpasya kimcid api rūpam tāstavam sambhavati. Advaita-siddhi, p. 621.
