Sarvadarshanasangraha 14.43

14.43

As for the drum beaten by the advocates of the existence of the supreme Lord, asserting that the supreme Lord acts out of compassion, that has suffered a miscarriage, because the dilemma is unsustainable: Does he act prior to creation, or at a time subsequent to creation? On the first alternative, because there is no body and the like, pain does not arise, and therefore a desire to remove the pain of living beings is impossible. On the second alternative, there is the consequence of mutual dependence: creation is due to compassion, and compassion is due to creation. Therefore, the transformation into the form of the intellect and so forth of the primary principle, even though insentient and unpresided over by a conscious being, is prompted by an aim of human existence and caused by the conjunction of the primary principle and the person. Just as, by the mere proximity of a magnet, though inactive, the activity of iron occurs, so by the mere proximity of the person, though inactive, the activity of the primary principle is appropriate. And the relation between primal matter and the person, like that of the lame and the blind, is based on mutual dependence. For primal matter depends on the person as an enjoyer to be its object of enjoyment; the person too, warding off the three kinds of pain belonging to the intellect because of reflection upon it through non-apprehension of difference, depends on isolation; that is based on the discrimination between primal matter and the person, and it is impossible without that [primal matter]; hence, for the sake of isolation, the person depends on the primary principle. Just as two men, one lame and one blind, travelling with a caravan along a road, abandoned by the caravan due to a calamity caused by fate, wandering slowly hither and thither, agitated by fear, should come together by the force of destiny, and there the lame man is mounted on the shoulder of the blind man; then, along the path indicated by the lame man, the blind man reaches the desired destination, and the lame man also, mounted upon his shoulder [reaches it]; even so, creation is based on the primary principle and the person who depend mutually on each other. As has been stated: