Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c15.s6.1

c15.s6.1

Çaṅkara in his exposition of the *Brahma Sūtra*¹ is explicit in his refutation of the whole Sarvāstivādin doctrine, which he summarizes with sufficient practical accuracy. He points out that there is no possible explanation of the aggregates which make up the empiric individual; the material aggregates are unintelligent; they cannot, therefore, unite themselves with the psychic elements, and the lighting up of intelligence is dependent on the prior existence of a body. The denial of the Lord deprives the Buddhists of any means of explanation *ab extra*; the series of consciousness as momentary cannot be the cause of motion in the atoms; the atoms and the aggregates cannot be self active, else they could never be brought to rest and release would be impossible. It is impossible to avoid this difficulty by reference to the chain of causation as sufficient explanation; even admitting that each member of the chain explains the next, still there is no explanation of the formation of aggregates. Moreover, the chain itself is open to grave criticism; as its elements are momentary, release itself subserves no purpose save itself, and, therefore, is in no sense true release. Further, it is really quite impossible for anything truly momentary to have any causal efficiency at all; that involves its persisting into the effect, which is wholly incompatible with momentariness. The Buddhists, indeed, abandon the doctrine of momentariness in admitting stages of origination, duration, and destruction, for these assume a certain degree of permanence. Nor will it avail to deny origination and destruction, for that will mean that the thing is everlasting. Similarly it is useless to deny causality, thus saving momentariness, for then there would be no regularity in the universe, and the view contradicts the whole Sarvāstivādin theory of causation. The whole doctrine, however, is ruined by the facts of experience which no philosopher can dispose of. All memory and recollection need a permanent and abiding subject, of which we are conscious in fact as every one admits, and the judgements ‘this is similar to that’ and ‘this is the same as that’, if analysed, reveal equally the existence of permanent objects.