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The Inexpressible or the Indefinite
103
argument of despair of a philosopher brought to bay. Apart from the fact that this admission is tantamount to a confession that a real with its full individuality is not amenable to what is admittedly a non-perceptual cognition, the position advocated involves the grammarian in self-contradiction. He starts with the premise that all that exists is word or a manifestation of word and word is consciousness. If that be the case the mutual difference of conditions cannot be maintained as real. And if these conditions be unreal, they cannot account for the difference in quality between perceptual and non-perceptual cognition. The conclusion is inescapable that a real, in so far as it is an individual, is not expressed by a word,1
The Buddhist position that a real is absolutely inexpressible will be examined at length and we shall find reasons to reject it. The principal defect of this theory is that it entajis consequences fatal to logical thought and expression. If verbal expressions are without a bearing upon reality, then all propositions would false. There would be no difference between a true and a false proposition. The result is the repudiation of the validity of philosophical discourse and, thus, the Buddhist stultifies himself when he repudiates philosophical discourse by means of such a discourse. So, the true position can be stated as follows: A real
t entirely expressible in all its aspects and modes. But it is not inexpressible altogether. A real being a multiple entity is expressible and inexpressible both in reference to different aspects; it is expressible in so far as it partakes of a universal and is inexpressible so far as it is a unique individual. The unique individual is known by direct intuition alone.
The Jaina avoids the extremism of Bhartshari and the Buddhist, and asserts that reals are expressible and inexpressible both and there is no contradiction in it. Reals are concrete embodiments of being and non-being, of being in so far as they are determined by their intrinsic determinations and of nonbeing in so far as they are distinguished from others by the corresponding extrinsic determinations. A pen has its intrinsic
1. sarvātmanā 'bhidheyatve pratyakşetaraviśeşāprasangāt, et seg. ibid., p. 130
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