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SATYASASANA-PARĪKSĀ
discrete momentary chair that is different from the table. But we feel that the table which appears to continue is different from the chair-continuum. There is no difference between the chair and the table so far as the appearance of continuum due to the non-cognition of the difference of the units is concerned. A question arises How can one continuum be felt as distinct from another continuum ?' Each member of chair-series is distinct from its other members in the same way as the members of the table-series are from those of the chairseries. Yet the chair-series is felt as distinct from the table-series. What is the reason of this? If the unbroken continuity of the emergence of the tablemoments be the reason of its distinction from the chair, the same unbroken continuity is found in all the series. It is difficult to understand, firstly, how absolutely distinct entities give rise to the appearance of identity; secondly, how one series can be distinguished from another series when the same absolute difference is found to obtain between them as is found between the members of a particular series. If similarity be held to be an additional reason for this appearance of identity and continuity, then why should not the two table-series, closely similar, be not felt as identical? There is similarity and also unbroken succession between the different units. You may say that one table is felt as distinct from another table and so their is no confusion between them. But the appeal to perception is useless because what is perceived is always the moment and not the series which is an unreal intellectual construction. So again the appeal to recognition cannot be of help, because in the Buddhist theory of flux nothing continues, and there is no identity between the past and the present, which is to be known by recognition. What is felt is always the moment, absolutely distinct and discrete from another moment. So no question of identity of one moment with another moment arises. In fact a plurality of units without a binding nexus can never account for the unity felt in an entity. If an abiding unity is posited to connect and combine the different units, then recognition and also causality can be explained. This is the position of the Jaina philosopher who asserts that a reality is a permanent unity which runs through the changing moments that appear in it. The criterion of reality is thus continuity and change, that is to say, the flux and influx of states.
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6 The Samkhya Evolutionism
The Samkhya philosophy admits dualism of prakṛti and purusa.
Prakṛti
is the material cause of the universe, and purusa is the immutable and unchanging principle of consciousness. Prakṛti is one but purusas are infinite in number. Both are ubiquitous. The prakṛti evolves in a definite order and the evolutes are twenty-three in number. The evolution starts with the unbalancing of the equilib
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