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notion of existence (bhāvalakṣaṇaprthaktvāt)."1 "Thus every reality is another reality. What is identical or similar is not ultimately real.”2 Stcherbastsky adds in this connection that "a difference in space-time is a difference in substance.”
The notion of an enduring substance is denied by the Buddhists. The 'moments' alone are real and the continuity-ideas associated with them as forming their connecting links are all our mind's creation. Difference is thus the key-note in the Buddhist metaphysics. If the notion of continuity which gives rise to the notion of permanence, substantiality and identity is not accepted, the reason
is that each existence is entirely autonomous and independent. 3 In the Sānkhya system is discernible a serious attempt at
getting over the problems concerning bare identity or being and total change or an eternal becoming by synthesizing them. The clue to the Sānkhya view is to be found in the dualism posited between matter and consciousness, referred to as prakrti and purusa. These represent the two important but independent aspects of Reality, prakrti standing for the dynamic but non-conscious principle and puruşa representing the static but conscious. Since prakrti is the dynamic entity it is responsible for all changes that take place in nature. The changes are attributable to the different types of combinations of sattva, rajas and tamas, the ultimate constituents of prakrti. Both the evolution of different things and the dissolution point to the reality of change. In the former case more and more differentiation takes place giving rise to diverse kinds of evolutes. In the latter case, the various things constituting the universe disintegrate and the original state of undifferentiated homogeneity is facilitated to be regained. Change is thus real in this system.
The concept of change which points to the notion of difference, however can be understood only in the light of the satkāryavāda theory of causality held by the Sānkhyas. According to this view the effect is not something entirely different from the cause ; it is something present in the cause right from the beginning. The usual example given is that of the yarns and the fabric, the fabric as the effect being considered as having been already present in the yarns,
1 Buddhist Logic (Leningrad, 1930), Vol. I, p. 30 2 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 105 3 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 282f.
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