________________
39
and Mimāmsā realism
The idealistic position might mean either the denial of the reality of external objects or the denial of their being different from knowledge or the assertion of a generic similarity between the objects and their cognitions The first alternative which denies external reality is plainly contradicted by the universal testimony of experience If it be objected that experience does not differ from illusion and hallucination in producing the sense of external reality and is thus an inadequate reason to establish such reality, the answer is that experience cannot be doubted quâ experience but only where it is contradicted by some other experience or reason The experience of external reality is not an extraordinary or casual experience It is regular and universally repeated Even its counterfeit in illusion or hallucination is required to bear the essential seal which characterizes experience viz , the apparent capacity of revealing an external reality As the content of an abhyāsadaśāpanna Pratyakşa, uncontradicted by any other experience or reason, the reality of external objects must be the content of a true belief In fact the illusoriness of illusions or hallucination is not quâ experience but quâ misrepresentation Illusions and hallucinations will, indeed, become meaningless unless we postulate external reals It is only with reference to such external reality that we judge experience to be true or false
Nor are the positive arguments advanced by the idealist adequate to prove his position Sahopalambha is an unproven reason (asıddha hetu) 14 If it means that any knowledge and any object are necessarily copresent, it is obviously false If it means that a particular object is necessarily found along with a particular cognition, then too it is false because different particular cognitions of the same object are possible in different minds If it means that an object and its cognition are simultaneous, then too it is false because on the Buddhist assumption itself the object must precede the cognition What is more, in memory, prescience etc , the object and its cognition are not simultaneous Not only is salopalambha unproven, it is also a ryablıcārī hetu
