Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c20.s2.1

c20.s2.1

As the doctrine of knowledge of the Hīnayāna presented a fatal temptation to further depreciation of our powers of knowing, so the Sautrāntika conception of the doctrine of the momentary series of states in lieu of the self, encouraged the Madhyamaka to proceed to further dissection. To reduce the self to such a series, to assert the act but not the agent,¹ was to produce something essentially obscure and doubtful, and to open the way to the suggestion of an absolute self underlying the series such as the person (puruṣa) of the Sāṃkhya; and, even if the momentariness of each state were insisted on, that would merely mean the imagination of a series of substantial though momentary selves, a re-introduction of the hateful doctrine of the self. Yet the orthodox alternative, to insist on the absence of any thing save a causal series, is fatal to the essential doctrine of action. There can be no true act if there is no freedom of the will, and without a true act there can be no enjoyment of fruits. To assert the act and deny the agent is therefore impossible; you must admit both, in that case merely from the standpoint of common sense (vyavahāratas),² or deny both from the standpoint of absolute reality. There is no room for a moral agent or responsibility in the mere potency into which the Sautrāntika doctrine in effect reduces existence.