________________
RELATION BETWEEN ACTIONS AND THEIR RESULTS.
313
waste of wliat is done and the befalling of what is not done'-as a matter of fact however, the view held by us is that the Universe is a mere Idea, and there is nothing that is done or experienced by anyone. How then could the said anomaly of the waste of what is done, etc.' be urged against us?
It is possible that the anomaly of (a) the Waste of what is done and (b) the befalling of what is not done' is urged against us on the ground that our view involves the production of Results from a Cause (a) which has lost that capacity to bring about desirable and undesirable results which is concurrent with a pre-existing Intelligence, and (b) which has acquired that capacity which is not concurrent with the preceding act.-But this cannot be right; because there is no incompatibility between the doctrine of No. Soul' and the presence of the capacity due to previous acts. For instance, just liko the Seeds soaked in red dye, the particular potentialities due to previous acts do actually continue in the chain'. and it is through these as subsequently developed that the desirable or undesirable result appears. Nor do we hold that the Result proceeds from a chain' not set up by previous acts; thus how could our view involve the anomaly of the befalling of what has not been done?
Uddyota kara has argued that the Mind being a fleeting entity, there is no possibility of its being affected (impressed) by Actions " -This is not right; as a matter of fact, there can be no affecting of the permanent thing which has not renounced its previous form ; as for the impermanent (fleeting) thing, its being "affected' consists in the very fact of the coming about of a new character. When the Scriptures speak of the Permanent Entity as affected, it is with reference to the permanence of the Chain'; that * Chain which is liable to be snapped cannot serve as the Cause', as it cannot bo present at the time of the birth of the Result at a long interval ; hence it would be clearly wrong to rogard such a Chain as the substratum of the 'impression leading to such a result. This is what is meant.-Thus what has been urged by Udd yotakara is based upon his ignorance of the doctrines of the other party and deserves to be ignored.—538-539)
Kumūrila has argued as follows:-* When we speak of the waste of what is done and the befalling of what is not done, we do not mean that the said anomaly is due to the act done by a certain Doer being destroyed, for the simple reason that under your view, there is no Doer; what we mean is that, inasmuch as you hold the destruction of the Act and the production of its Result to be absolute,- this is what involves the said anomaly of the waste of what is done and the befalling of what is not done'." (See Shlokavārtika, Atmavxida 12 et seq.]
In answer to this the Author proceeds to show that the said anomaly in this last form is what is actually admitted by the Buddhist and hence it is not right to put that forward to him as an undesirable contingency :
