Indian Logic Part 02

Author(s): Nagin J Shah
Publisher: Sanskrit Sanskriti Granthmala

Page 34

PERCEPTION
23
Jayanta : That source of pleasure too is not real inasmuch as it stands contradicted by a scripture.
Opponent : But what is contradicted here by the scripture? Jayanta : What is contradicted there by perception ?
Opponent: Perception decides that the object of that cognition is false.
Jayanta : The scripture decides that the source of this pleasure is false.
Opponent: Is this no source of pleasure.
Jayanta : Just as that object produces a defiled.cognition this source of pleasure produces a defiled pleasure conducive to disaster.si
Inspite of Jayanta's own endeavour to the contrary this dialogue makes it amply clear that 'erroneous' and 'non-erroneous' are adjectives that are appropriate attributes to a cognition but not to pleasure, etc. Really, what Jayanta calls erroneous and non-erroneous pleasure, etc. are what might be called improper and proper pleasure, etc. Thus it is the essential nature of a cognition that it identified its object in this manner or that so that it is non-erroneous in case this identification is correct, erroneous in case otherwise. On the other hand, it is the essential nature of pleasure, etc. that they as produced by an object are undergone by a living organism, they being deemed proper in case their acquisition is socially approved, improper in case otherwise. Jayanta, on the other hand, speaks as if both a cognition and pleasure, etc. might be erroneous or otherwise, and both produced by the object concerned. In fact, it makes no sense to say that a cognition is produced by the object concerned just as it makes no sense to say that pleasure, etc. might be erroneous or otherwise. For to cognize an object means to identify it on the basis of certain observed sensory features, and this means that a cognition is produced not by this object but by the cognizer concerned; what the object produces is the bare experience of the concerned sensory features, an experience which is not a cognition proper but just the starting-point of a cognition. Thus when the Buddhist says that perception is the type of cognition which
is produced by its object he is correct simply because he in effect · identifies perception with bare sensory experience; on the other hand,
when Jayanta says that all cognition which is not of the nature of memory is produced by its object his statement makes no sense simply because non-mnemonic cognition as understood by him can in no sense
IL-3