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III. XIII]
CRITICISM OF THE BUDDHIST AVIDYA
self with its fourfold infinite characteristics, which is realized in emancipation, is not a new creation in the absolute sense. It was always there. But the karmic matter served to obscure it. The obscuration is ended in the state of emancipation. The Jaina believes in change because it is found to be the universal character of all reals and if it means transition from being to non-being in a sectional reference, the Jaina is not frightened by it. So the objection of Sureśvara that emancipation, being a product of a process, will be liable to destruction does not cause any difficulty. It is found that gold in its natural state is associated with the ores from the very emergence of its being, but by a chemical process it is disentangled from them. And this does not involve any logical difficulty. Similar is the case of the self. Though it is associated with karmic matter throughout its past history, its dissociation from the latter cannot be an impossibility. The Vedantic solution that bondage and emancipation are both illusory cannot be regarded as the only satisfactory explanation as it has been made abundantly clear that the denial of plurality, in defiance of experience, cannot escape from fall into the abyss of universal nihilism or scepticism which Nagarjuna and his followers have shown to be the inevitable conclusion of pure logic.
Let us now estimate the value of the Buddhist conception of avidya.
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CRITICISM OF THE BUDDHIST CONCEPTION OF AVIDYA
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We have seen how avidya heads the chain of pratityasamutpāda (dependent origination). We have also stated the Vijñānavādin's conception of vasana under whose influence the consciousness (citta) appears as divided into the perceiver and the perceived, and is responsible for the world illusion.2 The Buddhist conception of 1 Vide supra, pp. 126-7. In this connection cf. also: 'Life in ordinary men is controlled by ignorance (avidya) which is the reverse of prajñā, but not its mere absence. It is a separate element which can be and, in every ordinary man really is, present at the same time with his dormant faculty of wisdom. But it is not a constant faculty, it can be suppressed (prahina) and thrown out of the mental stream altogether which then becomes purified or saintly (ārya)'-Stcherbatsky: The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana (Leningrad, 1927), p. 9 vide also 'p. 134 (footnote 1) of the same work.
2 Vide supra, pp. 129-30. Also cf. ... The transitional school of the Sauträntikas coalesced in the fifth century A.D. with the idealistic school of the Mahayana and produced India's greatest philosophers Dignaga and Dharmakirti. With regard to Nirvāņa it assumed the existence of a pure spiritual principle, in which object and subject coalesced, and along with it, a JP-26
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