Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c15.s6.6

c15.s6.6

Space is equally unable to sustain examination as conceived by the Buddhist; it must be real in view of the quality of sound belonging to it, for earth and other things with qualities are real. It is useless to maintain that it is really the absence of any covering or occupying body, for what is it that enables us to declare that there is the absence of a covering body in one place, and not in another? The answer can only be space, or rather ether, on which in point of fact the Buddhists themselves assert air to rest,¹ implying its material character and its positive nature. Moreover to the case of space, and the two forms of cessation or destruction alike the objection applies that the Buddhists treat them as not positively definable, and yet as eternal, an impossible position, for eternity or non-eternity can be asserted only of real entities, not of mere negations.