Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 1

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

Page 28

NATURE OF VALID COGNITION
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and uncontaminated in the enlightened conscio usness centres." There are three propositions distinguishable in the extract quoted above and each of them deserves meticulous examination. The first proposition is that consciousness is momentary and there is no perdurable identical subject. The second one is that the subject consisting in a series of consciousness-units continues without break, one consciousness-unit followed by the subsequent one as its effect. The third proposition is that the subjective centres are numerically different from one another. The first proposition asserts that consciousness-units are momentary and infinite in number forming an unending continuum. Obviously the doctrine of momentariness is borrowed from the Sautrāntikas who make causal efficiency (arthakriyakaritva) the sole criterion of existence.
Rival philosophers have advanced powerful arguments against the conception of causal efficiency as the sole criterion of existence. It is found that even illusory experience such as the experience of snake in a rope produces trepidation and the relevant motor activities. The snake appearance makes the erring subject spring back from it to a safe distance and that of silver in the nacre induces a forward movement for its acquisition. The causal efficiency of these illusions is undeniable, yet it cannot be real, belonging as it does to a false appearance. Furthermore causality has been shown by Dharmakirti in his work Sambandhaparik şa3 to be a convenient figment of understanding. In brief, causality cannot be an objective relation because the terms, cause and effect, are not synchronous and relation must subsist between two terms. In the present case the cause ceases to be when the effect comes into being. The relation is imposed by the subject as a convenient expedient of systematization of experience. It is a form or way of understanding as Kant maintains. Dharmakirti has anticipated Kant. It follows that the conclusion of momentariness of existents based on the argument of causal efficiency must collapse with its basis cut asunder.
Let us now examine the second postulate that the subject is an unending continuum of plural consciousness-units, one following on
1. Vijñaptimātramevedam traidhātukam, tacca vijñanam pratisattvasantāna.
bhedad anantam avisuddhañcänadhigatatattvānām, visuddham ca prahinavarapānām pratikşaņavisarāru ca sarvaprāṇabhstām ojāyate,
Tattvasaingraha (G.O.S.), p. 550. 2. For detailed discussion the reader is referred to my book The Buddhist
Philosophy of Universal Flux. 3. Reproduced in a large number in the Prameyakamalamārtanda and
Syad vādaratnākara. Sce also the Chapter entitled "Relations in The Jaina Philosophy of Non-absolutism.