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शुद्धोपयोग अधिकार
12 - THE PURE-COGNITION other souls. In a hundred pitchers, the general quality is their jar-ness, and the specific quality is their individual size, shape or mark. Thousands of trees in a forest have tree-ness (urksatva) as the general (sāmānya) attribute but each tree has specific (visesa) attributes, distinguishing these as neem tree, oak tree or palm tree.
Ācārya Samantabhadra’s Svayambhūstotra: यथैकशः कारकमर्थसिद्धये समीक्ष्य शेषं स्वसहायकारकम् । तथैव सामान्यविशेषमातृका नयास्तवेष्टा गुणमुख्यकल्पतः ॥ (१३-२-६२)
हे भगवन् (विमलनाथ)! आपके मत में जिस प्रकार एक-एक कारण - उपादान कारण अथवा निमित्त कारण - अपने सिवाय दूसरे सहकारी कारक की अपेक्षा करके ही किसी कार्य की सिद्धि के लिए समर्थ होते हैं वैसे ही सामान्य धर्म तथा विशेष धर्म को प्रगट करने वाले नय भी एक को मुख्य तथा दूसरे को गौण कहने की अपेक्षा से ही इष्ट हैं अर्थात् कार्य की सिद्धि के लिए समर्थ हैं।
O Lord Vimalanātha! Just as the two mutually supportive causes, the substantial cause (upādāna kārana) and the instrumental cause (nimitta kāraņa), result in the accomplishment of the desired objective, in the same way, your doctrine that postulates two kinds of attributes in a substance, general (sāmānya) and specific (visesa), and ascertains its particular characteristic (naya) depending on what is kept as the primary consideration for the moment while keeping the other attributes in the background, not negating their existence in any way, accomplishes the desired objective.
When our expression makes the general (sāmānya) aspect as its subject, the specific (višeșa) aspect becomes secondary and when the expression makes the specific aspect as its subject, the general aspect becomes secondary; this is achieved by using the word ‘syāt' in expression.
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