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The Buddhists assert that the "Particular is the only real element of an entity charactersed as svalakṣaṇa ( thing-in-itself). It is supposed to be momentary and a congregation of atoms. A thing accordingly is born and immediately after. wards it is destroyed 28. The substance is nirhetuka (devoid of causes) in the sense that it originates without the assistance of cause other than its own cause of origination. Each moment produces another moment destroying itself and thus it presents a sort of continuisyly of existence. Thus it manages to maintain a cause and effect (kāryakāraṇabhava) relationship.
According to Buddhism, Momentariness (kṣaṇabhangurata) and causal efficiency (kārya-kūraṇabhūva) are inseparable. It treated momentariness, efficiency, causality and reality as synonyms, and hence argued that an entity is momentary because it was efficient and it was efficient because it was momentary. On the basis of this idea, the Buddhists criticise causal efficiency in a permanent thing. They say that entities come into Being either simultaneously (yugapadena) or successively (kramena). But in a permanent thing, both these ways cannot be effective, since they are not able to originate it immediately due to the non-proximity of a cause. In the first alternation, the substance should originate all the possible effects in the very first moment of its existence, As regards the type of causal efficiency that takes place simultaneously, a permanent thing cannot have any effects, because it can be neither perceived nor inferred. As Santarakşıta says, after having brought about all the effects simultaneously, the nature of a thing comprising its capacity for effective action, disappears, and therefore the momentary character of a thing is an essential factor for causal effeciency. Furthermore they point out that auxiliaries (sahakuri) must follow the things with which they are connected. These auxiliaries, as a matter of fact, cannot abide with permanent things, because the peculiar condition produced in a thing by auxiliaries would neither be simailar
