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III. X111]
CRITICISM OF THE BUDDHIST AVIDYA
207
the effect's occurrence? There can be no difference, as we have said, between a remote past and an immediate past, because the absence of the cause is uniform in both cases. The question comes to be 'How can the non-existent be the cause of the existent?' One might equally affirm that an eternally existent entity might produce an occasional effect. If it is urged that there is no concomitance between an eternally existent fact and an occasional event because the existence of the effect is not concomitant with that of the cause, and the cause is present when the effect ceases to be. But this is also the case with the Buddhist when he affirms that the effect comes into being during the absence of the cause at a particular time and place, but not during the whole period of its absence in the uncounted past and in unending future. And this amounts to the denial of the law of causalityl which was the corner-stone of the Buddha's religious and philosophical edifice. Not only this, the self-contradiction obtrudes itself most unabashedly when the Buddhist fluxist makes causal efficiency the criterion of reality and ends in the conclusion that the effect is independent of the cause which is deducible from the proposition that the effect comes into being when the cause is absent. Thus causality is as inexplicable in the theory of flux as it is in the theory of eternally unchanging cause.
There is another serious difficulty in the doctrine of flux. It is a matter of universal experience that the continuous indentity of the self as well as of objects is felt by all. This felt identity is asserted to be illusion by the Auxist. But what is the basis of this illusion? Illusion presupposes a previous cognition. A man who has never experienced silver cannot mistake the shell for silver. Identity is inseparable from continuity. But as there is not real continuity anywhere according to the Buddhist, how can there be such illusion possible? The supposed continuity is said to be formed by discrete moments which come into being and pass out of existence. So there is no real continuity anywhere. It is affirmed by the Buddhist himself that the discrete moments when not felt as distinct create the illusion o identity. We have shown that this illusion is impossible. But even admitting for the sake of argument that such an illusion may be possible, the question arises 'How can one continuum be distinguished from another continuum?' Now, it is a felt fact that the chair is different from the table. It is not the 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
1 Astasahasrī, p. 183.
2 Ibid., pp. 190 et seq. 3 santānina evä 'parāmīsta-bhedāḥ santāna iti svayam abhyu pagamāt. Astasahasri, p. 191.
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