Mahavira and his Teaching

Author(s): C C Shah, Rishabhdas Ranka, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: Bhagwan Mahavir 2500th Nirvan Mahotsava Samiti

Page 110

BHAVYATVA AND ABHAVYATVA
103
employed by Buddhists confronted with a similar problem. This revolutionary doctrine was introduced by Vasubandhu, the Sautrāntika author of the Abhidharma-kośa-Bhāş ya,2 to explain the following sūtra passage:
“A person is endowed with kušala (wholesome) as well as akušala (unwholesome) dharmas. His kušala-dharmas disappear. But there is in him the root (mūla) of kušala not destroyed. Even this kušala-mula is in course of time completely annihilated, whereupon he comes to be designated as a samucchinna-kausla-mūla."3
Here arises a problem regarding the rise of a new wholesome thought (kušala-citta) in the thought-series (santatı) of such a person. An unwholesome citta cannot be followed by a kusalacitta, or vice versa, as the law of causation demands a certain homogeneity between two succeeding (samanantara) moments. According to this theory a person who has exhausted all his kušala-mulas has no chance of conceiving a new kušala thought (for good cannot immediately succeed bad). The Buddhist here must either modify the law of causation pertaining to immediate succession (samanantara-pratyaya), or must let such a person drift forever in samsāra for want of a new kušala-citta. Vasubandhu solves this dilemma by postulating his innovative theory of kusala-dharma-bija.
1.
See my edition of the Abhidharmadipa with Vibhasā prabhà-vsiti. Tibetan Sanskrit Works Series, Vol. IV, pp. 166-170. See my paper “The Sautrantika theory of bija” in the BSOAS, University of London, Vol. XXII, Part 2, 1959, pp. 236-249. Abhidharmakośa-Bhas ya, II, 36. (Pradhan's edition, Patna, 1967) “samanvigato 'yam purusah kusalarr apr dharmaih” itt vistarah. ../ te 'sya pudgalasya kusală dharma antardhäsyantz . . . asti cāsya kusalamūlam anusahagatam anupacchinnam upapattilābhikam/ tad apy aparena samayena sarvena sarvam samucchetsyatelyasya samucchedāt samucchinna-kušala-mula iti samkhyām gamis yatitt Abhidharmadi þa-Vịttı, kā. 199.