Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 1

Author(s): Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology & Ahimsa Mujjaffarpur

Page 27

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VAISHALI INSTITUTE RESEARCH BULLETIN NO. I
caust of all the pre-suppositions of human existence. Not only this but the existence of other subjects as centres of consciousness (santānantara) is exposed to the same charge of absurdity. How can one know that there are other persons, if they are not real entities existing in their own right ? They must be dismissed as the contents of the experience of a subject, just like other external objects. And these subjects cannot be other than the knowing subject. The inference of the separate identity of different persons based upon the experience of their vocal and physical activities which are equally suspect, cannot be maintainable. The inevitable consequence of subiectivism is solipsism, 'I alone exist will be the only sound proposition. Though solipsism has been justified with arguments by the extreme Vedantic monists it does not carry conviction and satisfy our logical and practical conscience. The Buddhists will have to deny the existence of the Buddha as Nagarjuna has boldly declared. But negativism (šūnyavāda) in spite of its plausibility and respectability as a philosophical theory cannot be supposed to be the last word in philosophy.
Dignága, Dharmakirti and his followers have developed Vijñanavada as a logical corollary of the doctrine of momentariness of reals. They have arrived at the conclusion that consciousness is momentary and no two consciousness-moments are identical. But because the previous consciousness unit produces a subsequent homogeneous consciousness and the object or content is not different from the cognitive consciousness, the idea of continuity and identity is an illusion generated by the unbroken continuum of the causal series of consciousnessmoments. The lack of a perceptible interval between two consciousnessunits and the homogeneity of the causal series give rise to the illusion of identity and permanence. In point of fact consciousness is a momentary entity which exists only for a mathematical instant and perishes in the next moment utterly and irrevocably.
The theory of the subjective idealist (Vijñā navādin) has been summed up by Kamalasila, the commentator of the Tattvasamgraha in the following terms. The whole universe consisting of three spheres namely, the sensible world (kāmadhātu), the pure material world (rūpadhātu) and the immaterial world (arūpadha tu) is nothing but consciousness. The centres of consciousness called santāna (continuing subjects) are infinite in number. Each inevitably perishes in the next moment. As regards unenlightened subjects this consciousness is contaminated by moral and intellectual defects (klesa), and it is pure