Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c20.s2.4

c20.s2.4

The idea of consciousness and knowledge is equally unable to bear serious examination; it is as unreal as the belief of a man with ophthalmia that there are hairs floating before his vision.³ Knowledge is impossible, and therefore⁴ cannot exist; examined, it proves out of the question to know anything external or even internal; the point of the sword cannot pierce itself or the finger touch itself. Consciousness cannot know anything either antecedent, simultaneous, nor subsequent to itself.¹ But the matter can be carried further; there is no such thing as causation of consciousness or of anything else. The Pali Canon² already recognizes that the chain of causation is opposed to the doctrine that anything is produced either by itself, by another, by both or neither, and this is confirmed by reasoning. If a thing already exists, it cannot come into being through itself. To say that it is originated by others implies the production of something already existing, or we should have the absurdity of darkness producing light. Since neither itself nor other things can produce anything, it cannot be the effect of both, and to deny any cause would mean that any thing could come into being at any time. The doctrine of causation, therefore, must be taken as referring only to the world of ignorance. How again can that which is momentary have any effect? Is it anterior, simultaneous, or posterior? The two latter views are absurd, but so is the former which makes out the disappearance of one moment the cause of the appearance of another. Moreover, the very idea of production by another contradicts the fundamental doctrine of the non-existence of the self, since there can be another only when a self is admitted. More generally there is no such thing as the true independent nature of any object; heat is not the nature of fire, for each depends on a variety of conditions and so indefinitely; we cannot attain any idea which can be said to be the true nature of any object, and therefore we are equally unable to assert the essence or existence of other things which have meaning only when we grasp the nature of any object.³ Similar difficulties affect every recognized conception; the characteristics cannot exist before the thing characterized, since without them it has no existence and cannot therefore come into being, while the thing characterized cannot take on the characteristics.⁴ Movement is impossible; he who has gone is not going, nor is he who will go; while the goer does not go, since that would need two forms of action, one to give him the style of goer, and one to be attributed to him in saying that he goes. The goer does not stand, but neither does the non-goer, since he is vi termini not connected with going, and he who stands is connected negatively with going.¹ Every conceivable relation yields to such dialectic; subject and object; actor and action; fire and fuel; existence and non-existence; extension or matter; sensation and perception; origination, duration, and disappearance; unity and plurality; whole and part; time; the aggregates; the six elements; the dispositions; the senses; as well as all the deepest doctrines of Buddhism, including misery, the Tathāgata, the noble truths, the chain of causation, bondage, and release itself, prove incapable of sustaining the searching examination or reductio ad absurdum (prasaṅga) which establishes that they neither exist of themselves, nor by others, nor by both, nor by neither.²