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208
PROBLEM OF AVIDYA
[CH.
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 chair-series. 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 table-moments be the reason for 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 there 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.
As regards the subjectivist idealists, the Buddhist subjectivists hold that the only thing that exists is consciousness and external objects are only false appearances like those of dream experience. But this position can be established only by an organ of knowledge. Without the support of an organ of knowledge, the Buddhist cannot prove the falsity of the theories of rival philosophers who believe in extra-mental reality. Not only this, the subjectivist cannot prove the falsity of the differentiation of cognition into an act and a content. The subjectivist
1 na ca parasparam vilakşaņānām eva kşaņānām atyantam anvayāsattve 'py antar bahir va santatayo 'sankirņa eva pratyakşataḥ pratītāḥ tasyai 'kakşanagocaratayā santānāvişayatvät-Ibid.
2 Astasahasri, Chap. VII (pp. 240 et seq.).
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