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Collection: Part 11 · VIDEHA MITHILA MAITHILI DISCUSSION CRITICISM SERIES PART 11
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0:00–0:06अप्मशिदिवेदा दिबेट आन दिश्छ्विमर्शक अछि।
0:06–0:14Tonight's assembly, Sutradhara, Udaya Nakharya, Karphadra, Jnanamitra, a student, a farmer,
0:14–0:17the assembly, Pariyad.
0:17–0:22An original dramatic composition divided into a prologue, six acts, each in several scenes,
0:22–0:27and an epilogue, this is not a translation of the original treatise, but an independent
0:27–0:31creative work built upon its argument structure.
0:31–0:36This is the extended form of the previously presented four act, Atmasidivada, the doctrine
0:36–0:41of momentariness now receives two full acts, the doctrine of a poha its own independent
0:41–0:46act, and the remaining three subjects a multi-scene expansion.
0:46–0:52Prologue The Stradra enters and bows to the assembly.
0:52–0:57Before the debate begins, a bow, not to that supreme lord who can be proved or disproved
0:57–1:02by argument, but to that reality which no argument can either grant or take away.
1:02–1:06What you are about to hear is not history.
1:06–1:10Udayana lived, his opponents live only in his pages, like the shadow of the arm that
1:10–1:13blocks the lamp.
1:13–1:17I have gathered all those shadows into two robes, Karphadra, the fortunate of the
1:17–1:21moment, who will speak for every teacher who held that nothing endures, and his young
1:21–1:25companion Jnanamitra, who will speak for that subtlest of Buddhist doctrines whose
1:25–1:31name is a poha, that the meaning of the word, cow, is no cowness at all, but only, the negation
1:31–1:37of the non-cow. Tonight and tomorrow this debate will run long, six acts, many scenes, because
1:37–1:43Udyana's treatise is itself long, and each of its knots demands its own time.
1:43–1:48The dispute will ask a single question in six different rooms, who is asking.
1:48–1:51Water clock, begin.
1:51–1:52Exit
1:52–1:53Act 1
1:53–1:58The river that is not there.
1:58–2:03The inference for momentariness and the examination of capacity.
2:03–2:04Seem 1.
2:04–2:06The thesis.
2:06–2:10Udayana is seated on the teacher's seat.
2:10–2:13Carb Harder enters, accompanied by genometra.
2:13–2:16The student sits at Udayana's feet.
2:16–2:21Akaria, I will not spend the water clocks water on formalities.
2:21–2:26You tease that behind these ice sits an unmoving watcher, one and the same from the child who
2:26–2:30fears the dark to the old man who no longer does.
2:30–2:35I teach the opposite, whatever is real arises and parishes within a single moment.
2:35–2:39What you call one flame is hundreds of flames, greeting one another so quickly that no one
2:39–2:43can see where the farewell ends and the greeting begins.
2:43–2:46There is no one watcher.
2:46–2:50There is only watching, and then more watching, each time new.
2:50–2:55Then the question for which debate itself was built, proof.
2:55–2:58Not poetry, proof.
2:58–3:00An inference by the full method.
3:00–3:03Thesis, whatever is real is momentary.
3:03–3:09Reason, existence itself are Thakriya Kharitva, the capacity to perform a function.
3:09–3:14Pervasion, whatever performs a function does so only by being momentary.
3:14–3:18Example, the lamp flame.
3:18–3:22What is not momentary does nothing at all like a skyflower.
3:22–3:26And the disputed things, the jar, the mountain, the self are all real, all doing something
3:26–3:28or other.
3:28–3:31Therefore all are momentary.
3:31–3:35Keep your hand on that provision, and do not let it go, for the whole inference hangs
3:35–3:37from it.
3:37–3:41Whatever is real is momentary, where did you observe this law?
3:41–3:43In the lamp flame.
3:43–3:46A single example is not a law.
3:46–3:52The jar that lasts for years is exactly as real as the spark that lasts one moment.
3:52–3:57You must show me that there is a contradiction between enduring and being real, and your
3:57–4:01one thread to that contradiction is this word, capacity.
4:01–4:05So come, let us cut it open and see.
4:05–4:09Seem 2, the three forms of capacity.
4:09–4:12Hear the argument at its full edge.
4:12–4:18in incapacity cannot reside in one and the same thing at one and the same time. A seed lies in
4:18–4:24the granary, it produces no sprout. The very same seed in the field, meeting soil, water,
4:24–4:30and warmth, it produces a sprout. If the seed of both conditions is one, then it was at once
4:30–4:36capable and incapable, a contradiction. Therefore admit, the granary seed was one thing,
4:36–4:41the field seed another, new seeds moment by moment, and only that moment seed in which the
4:41–4:45The sprob producing capacity resided was the producer.
4:45–4:51Capacity, this word has three possible meanings, and I will place all three into your hands,
4:51–4:54one by one, to see which survives.
4:54–5:00First, capacity means the act itself, whatever is producing is thereby capable.
5:00–5:06Second, capacity means fitness for immediate production, the fitness to produce, in the
5:06–5:08very next moment.
5:08–5:15Third, capacity means mere fitness, being productive by nature, whether the auxiliaries are met with or not.
5:16–5:17Choose.
5:18–5:25Not the first, plainly, to call the acted self capacity would make reason and probandom one, and the inference would collapse into repetition.
5:27–5:30Correct, so the first is gone, and you yourself threw it away.
5:31–5:37Now the second, fitness for immediate production, only what produces in the very next moment is capable.
5:38–5:45This is your favorite meaning, because by this alone the granary seed is declared incapable.
5:45–5:50But ask yourself, does this property called immediate productivity exist at all?
5:50–5:55He gestures toward the farmer at the side of the stage, the farmer comes forward carrying
5:55–5:57his sack of seed.
5:57–6:01In this farmer's sack are a hundred seeds.
6:01–6:07On your view, every seed moment either is an immediate producer or is not.
6:07–6:12Now see the trap, what distinguishes the producing from the non-producing seed.
6:12–6:17Their form is one, their smell one, their weight one.
6:17–6:20You will say, an invisible particularity.
6:20–6:25Then I will ask, what is the proof of that invisible particularity?
6:25–6:28By seeing the effect.
6:28–6:32Then this is mutual dependence, the particularity is established from the effect, and the
6:32–6:37The law of the effect is established from the particularity.
6:37–6:42And if you admit an invisible particularity without proof, then hear the satire that stands
6:42–6:46written in the pages of my own treatise, in that case you must equally suspect that
6:46–6:51a cause may remain non-productive even with the auxiliaries present, and that the effect
6:51–6:56may arise even without them, and, in the end, suspect that a sprout may arise without
6:56–6:58any seed at all.
6:58–7:03At that point you're claimed that, we carefully examine and establish the positive and negative
7:03–7:07concomitance of cause and effect, becomes pure comedy.
7:07–7:14Plainly, a caria, I know only this much, the seed of this very sack, lying silent today,
7:14–7:16will sprout next-a.
7:16–7:22If today's seed and that day's seed are two different things, why do I guard the sack?
7:22–7:25A light ripple of laughter.
7:25–7:31And that, friends, is philosophy's greatest examination, the farmer's question.
7:31–7:36To Kaphadra, now the third meaning remains, mere fitness.
7:36–7:43The seed is by nature sprout-fit, in the granary too, it merely lacked the auxiliaries.
7:43–7:48This meaning is closest to the truth, but it kills your inference.
7:48–7:52For fitness is then one and the same in both conditions, in the granary and in the
7:52–7:54field alike.
7:54–7:59Your then has that contradiction of capable and incapable God, on which you had raised
7:59–8:01the difference of moments.
8:01–8:07The fitness endures, the seed endures, and your provision has slipped from your hand.
8:07–8:13Seen 3, the question of the auxiliaries and the nature of opposition.
8:13–8:16Taking a new front, then take it this way.
8:16–8:20Grant that seedhood itself is the regulator of causality, and that a thing becomes productive
8:20–8:23by union with the auxiliaries.
8:23–8:28But all this can apply to many things, not to one individual.
8:28–8:32In a single individual, producing and not producing, that is contradicted by perception
8:32–8:34itself.
8:34–8:40Now I have arrived at the very place where your whole school goes wrong, the nature of opposition.
8:40–8:43When does opposition occur?
8:43–8:49When two properties cannot reside in one thing at one time, by one relation.
8:49–8:55and hot in one and the same water at one and the same moment, opposition. But one and the
8:55–9:01same water cool in the morning and warm at noon, what opposition? By difference of time,
9:01–9:08opposition dissolves. Just so, the seed, non-producing in the time without auxiliaries, producing in
9:08–9:14the time with them, one seed, two times, no opposition at all. You are loading onto
9:14–9:19a difference of things the work done by a difference of times.
9:19–9:24A man sits, then stands, are the sitter and the standard two men.
9:24–9:30A lump of gold becomes a bangle, then an earring, are their three golds.
9:30–9:36Take magnitude as well, one in the same cloth is first small, then, two threads added,
9:36–9:41larger, different magnitudes at different times in one substance, people see it daily,
9:41–9:44and nowhere does opposition cry out.
9:44–9:49Then my last refuge, let the momentary thing be productive at all times, in whatever moment
9:49–9:53it exists, in that very moment it does its work, and delay is only the illusion of the
9:53–9:55series.
9:55–10:00Then every seed in the world would sprout every moment, every fire would burn the world
10:00–10:05every moment, and the thing called a granary could not exist at all.
10:05–10:09A doctrine that makes the granary impossible ought to be ashamed to repeat itself in
10:09–10:11front of a farmer.
10:11–10:15The farmer, smiling, lifts his sack and steps aside.
10:15–10:20Hear the conclusion of the act, all three meanings of capacity have been tested, the
10:20–10:25first a repetition, the second unprovable, the third against you.
10:25–10:30The provision is unestablished, and an inference standing on an unestablished provision is a
10:30–10:32bridge of sand.
10:32–10:34The lamp is trimmed.
10:34–10:39The straddle appears for a moment and announces, the second pillar of momentariness, the
10:39–10:46causelessness of destruction in the next act. Act 2.
10:46–10:51Breaking without a hammer. The doctrine of the causelessness of destruction
10:51–10:58and the establishment of persistence. Scene 1. Does destruction need no cause?
10:58–11:04With new vigor, the front of capacity has fallen granted. But my second pillar still
11:04–11:11stands, and it is stronger than the first. Hear it, destruction requires no cause at all. Why?
11:12–11:17Because whatever has arisen, its destruction is inevitable, and what is inevitable is not
11:17–11:23dependent on a cause. What depends on a cause sometimes happens and sometimes does not, like
11:23–11:30rain. But destruction? Destruction comes to everything, always, without exception.
11:30–11:40Therefore destruction is the very nature of the thing, and if destruction is its nature, the thing perishes the instant it arises, momentariness established by another road.
11:41–11:44A beautiful argument, and its beauty is its trap.
11:45–11:49Inevitable, therefore causeless, where did you bring this law from?
11:50–11:53Death too is inevitable, does death have no causes?
11:53–12:01Disease, old age, the weapon, the science of medicine lies full of the causes of death.
12:01–12:06Inevitability says only this much, that some cause or other will certainly assemble, not
12:06–12:09that no cause is needed at all.
12:09–12:14And now put your hand into the belly of your own doctrine, if destruction is causeless,
12:14–12:19why did this jar, he lifts the jar, not break at this very moment?
12:19–12:22Why not the moment before?
12:22–12:26What happens without a cause either happens always or never, because only a cause answers
12:26–12:29the question, when.
12:29–12:33You will say, it is breaking, moment by moment.
12:33–12:35Then what will this do?
12:35–12:38He lifts the stone from the side of the stage.
12:38–12:43Why do people raise a stick to break a jar, if the jar by its own nature is already shattering
12:43–12:46every moment?
12:46–12:50In your doctrine the stick is the most useless object in the world, and yet everyone
12:50–12:53from the Potter to the King relies on it.
12:53–12:58The stick does not destroy, the stick merely begins a dissimilar series.
12:58–13:02The stream of Jar moments was flowing, the stick struck, and the stream of Shard moments
13:02–13:04began.
13:04–13:08Destruction was each moment's own nature all along.
13:08–13:14Then destruction and the beginning of a dissimilar series, two words, two things,
13:14–13:19and what the world calls, the Jar broke, is, on your view, no destruction, only a
13:19–13:25bend in the stream. So I ask, is that bend caused or uncaused?
13:25–13:31Caused, then the stick is its cause, and you have handed me half my house, for you have
13:31–13:35admitted a cause of the very thing the world calls destruction.
13:35–13:40Uncaused, then the stick is useless again, and I have arrived once more at that farmer's
13:40–13:45courtyard where every one of your doctrines goes to stub its toe.
13:45–13:50to, the destruction and the destroyed thing non-different.
13:50–13:52Then descend deeper.
13:52–13:57I say, there is no difference at all between destruction and the thing destroyed.
13:57–14:03Destruction is no separate event, it is the thing's own final moment itself.
14:03–14:07Therefore asking forth the cause of destruction is as meaningless as asking forth the cause
14:07–14:09of a thing's thinghood.
14:09–14:14If destruction and the thing are non-different, then as long as the thing exists, its destruction
14:14–14:20exists, as long as the jar is, the jar's destruction also is.
14:20–14:27Then the jar exists and the jar has perished, both sentences true at one and the same time,
14:27–14:31and language, practice, buying and selling all collapse.
14:31–14:35Will the potter sell the jar, or the jar's destruction?
14:35–14:40And if you say the destruction is subsequent to the thing, then the very word, subsequent,
14:40–14:46As admitted the difference, the thing first, the destruction after, two times, two bearers
14:46–14:48of properties.
14:48–14:52The non-difference position has sat down under its own weight.
14:52–14:56A carrier, then what is destruction?
14:56–15:00The cessation of its counter positive, that absence of the thing which comes after the
15:00–15:05thing in which has causes, the stick, fire, time.
15:05–15:09Destruction is caused, and therefore the thing endures exactly as long as the causes
15:09–15:16of its destruction do not assemble. That is what persistence is. No mystery, only the plain
15:16–15:21statement that, as long as it has not broken, it is.
15:21–15:26Seen 3. Recognition. The positive proof of persistence.
15:26–15:31And now I will not only demolish, I will build.
15:31–15:36The positive proof of persistence is recognition, Pradyabhijna, this is that very jar which
15:36–15:43I saw yesterday. This cognition does not say, one like it, it says, this very one. Between
15:43–15:48similarity cognition and identity cognition there is the difference of sky and earth,
15:48–15:55this is like that, and this is that very thing, in the first, two objects, in the second,
15:55–16:01one. And people never confuse the two, one who sees twin brothers and says, the very
16:01–16:07same is counted mistaken, while one who says, the very same of his own old jar is counted right.
16:08–16:14Recognition is an illusion born of similarity. The later moment jar resembling the earlier moment
16:14–16:19jar and the stream unbroken in between from just this arises the sense of the very same.
16:20–16:27An illusion. Then show me its defeat or illusion is the name for what is cancelled at a later
16:27–16:33time, the appearance of a snake in a rope, canceled when the light comes. This is that
16:33–16:40jar, when, by whom, in what light was this cognition ever canceled? Your cancellation is only your
16:40–16:48doctrine, and experience is not cut by doctrine, doctrine is cut by experience. A second point,
16:48–16:52if recognition is an illusion, what is your own cognition of the series?
16:52–16:58To recognize the stream as a stream is likewise to join two moments and view them together,
16:58–17:04and if the joiner is himself momentary, who will do the joining. The ladder by which you
17:04–17:06have climbed to break my roof belongs to my own courtyard.
17:06–17:13Carp-harder is silent for a while. The sound of the water-clock's dripping can be heard.
17:13–17:20Quietly, both pillars have shaken, a carrier, to admit it is honesty. But there
17:20–17:26There is one more arrow in my quiver, and it will fly not at outer objects, but at words.
17:26–17:29My companion Nana Mitra is its archer.
17:29–17:34Stradra, the doctrine of a poha, the next act.
17:34–17:37Act 3.
17:37–17:39The net of negations.
17:39–17:44The examination of the doctrine of a poha is a word meaning only, the negation of the
17:44–17:46other.
17:46–17:49Seem 1, Jananamitra's position.
17:49–17:54Geometry, young and sharp, at the speaker's place for the first time.
17:54–17:56Akaria Udayana.
17:56–18:02For two acts you have wielded the words jar, seed, cow without fear.
18:02–18:09As though behind every word stood some stable universal, countless, jarnis, seedness.
18:09–18:12I will lay the acts at that foundation.
18:12–18:16What is understood on hearing the word cow is no real countless at all, only the
18:16–18:19exclusion of the non-cow.
18:19–18:25which is not other than cow. A word's work is to put up a fence. Not to plant anything in the middle.
18:25–18:32Why believe this? Because the thing called a universal does not survive examination.
18:32–18:38One cowness in many cows, if it resides completely, then the whole of cowness in one cow and what is
18:38–18:44left for the second. If it resides by parts, parts of the partless? When a new cow is born,
18:44–18:51Does Countess travel there? Or was it there already? When a cow dies, does Countess die?
18:51–18:58Or is it widowed? Every answer is laughable. Therefore the intelligent road drop the universal,
18:58–19:05take the negation, cow means not non-cow. To the student with affection, the young archer's
19:05–19:11arrow flies straight and I will catch it with respect. To Namitra, first question,
19:11–19:15and in it lies half your answer, non-cow, what does this term mean?
19:16–19:25The negation of cow. And cow. The negation of non-cow. Then cow equals that which is the negation
19:25–19:31of the negation of cow. The thing to be defined has circled back inside its own definition.
19:33–19:38This is mutual dependence, and you have only one escape from it, somewhere, at some point,
19:38–19:43admit some positive, affirmative, meaning, from which the net of negations can be tied.
19:44–19:48Even to put up a fence, one needs the whereabouts of the field.
19:49–19:55The exclusions differ among themselves, cow exclusion is one thing, horse exclusion another,
19:55–19:59and by this very difference practice will run without any positive meaning.
20:00–20:03Difference among exclusions. On what basis?
20:03–20:09This is the difference of the difference of the difference of cow from horse and the difference
20:09–20:11of cow from horse.
20:11–20:14On your view, that too rests on exclusions.
20:14–20:16The circle again.
20:16–20:22This dance of negation upon negation will spin forever, and nowhere will there be ground
20:22–20:23to set a foot.
20:23–20:24The circle again.
20:24–20:25The circle again.
20:25–20:26The circle again.
20:26–20:27The circle again.
20:27–20:28The circle again.
20:28–20:29The circle again.
20:29–20:30The circle again.
20:30–20:31The circle again.
20:31–20:32The circle again.
20:32–20:33The circle again.
20:33–20:39foot. And plain experience gives its testimony directly, when a child recognizes a cow for
20:39–20:44the first time, does he do so by negating all the non-cows of the world, the horse,
20:44–20:51the elephant, the camel, which he has never even seen. He simply sees something, the
20:51–20:57horns, the muzzle, that build, something positive, which shines in every cow. Cognition
20:57–21:02is affirmative, negation is its shadow, not its body.
21:02–21:06Seem to, the defense of the universal.
21:06–21:09Then answer my acts, all those questions.
21:09–21:10One in many, how?
21:10–21:13Whence countess in the newborn cow?
21:13–21:18I will, and the key to the answer is this, do not weigh the universal on the scales
21:18–21:20of substance.
21:20–21:25Coming and going, belongs to substance, the universal's mode of being is residence,
21:25–21:27not motion.
21:27–21:31The lamp's light throughout the room, has the light been divided?
21:31–21:36Space in every jar, has space been cut into pieces.
21:36–21:41One residing completely in many, this sits oddly with substance thinking, because substance
21:41–21:46does not behave so, but this is precisely the universal's own nature, and against a
21:46–21:52nature no, why, runs, just as you do not ask why fire is hot.
21:52–21:58A new cow is born, Countess did not go there, that cow became Countess new locus, just as
21:58–22:02when a new house is built, space did not arrive in it.
22:02–22:04And the proof.
22:04–22:10The recurrent cognition, this is a cow, this is a cow, this is a cow, a cognition of one
22:10–22:14and the same form across different individuals.
22:14–22:19This cognition cannot be objectless, and its object is not the individuals, for the
22:19–22:25The individuals differ, therefore its object is that one recurrent property, the universal.
22:25–22:31The very experience that a poha is forced to acknowledge establishes the universal directly,
22:31–22:36you abandon the straight road and, circling backward, arrive at the same place, picking
22:36–22:39negation thorns the whole way.
22:39–22:41Not yielding, but activity?
22:41–22:44People here bring a cow and walk toward a cow.
22:44–22:49If the word's object is a universal, then let them fetch countless, and countless cannot
22:49–22:51be tied with a rope.
22:51–22:57And this is my final answer, which my tradition will repeat down to Gagia, the word's object
22:57–23:02is the individual qualified by the universal, the cow possessed of countless.
23:02–23:08Neither bear countless, nor the bear individual, than not of the two.
23:08–23:12Therefore on hearing, bring a cow, a person fetches the horned one, and no list of
23:12–23:19the negations of non-cows is ever required of him. To Namitra, gently, your axe was sharp,
23:19–23:23archer, but the rudic struck turned out to be stone.
23:23–23:30Jnometra bows and sits. Carp harder rises, his bearing has now changed.
23:30–23:35Act 4 The Hall of Mirrors
23:35–23:41The examination of the denial of external objects, the doctrine of consciousness only.
23:41–23:49one, the argument from dream. Now my deepest fortress, a carrier. So much debate about outer
23:49–23:54things, but is there an outer at all? When you dream of a garden, is the garden outside?
23:56–24:03No. And yet the dream garden feels exactly as outside as this hall does now. The sense of
24:03–24:08outwardness is the same in both, and if that sense can occur in dream without any outer object,
24:08–24:14What compels us to posit outer objects in waking? Cognition takes on the blue and yellow forms
24:14–24:20by itself. Look at the rule of co-apprehension. Blue and the cognition of blue are always
24:20–24:25apprehended together, has blue ever been found without cognition? What are always together
24:25–24:32are non-different. Blue is nothing but cognition. Non-difference from co-apprehension.
24:32–24:38Then the lamp and the jar seen by the lamp are also always apprehended together, has
24:38–24:41the jar become the lamp?
24:41–24:45The plain meaning of joint apprehension is that one is the instrument of grasping the
24:45–24:50other, cognition is the instrument, blew the object.
24:50–24:54To extract identity from the constant companionship of instrument and object is to call the
24:54–24:57scale and the thing weighed one.
24:57–25:01And at the root of the dream argument lies an ax, the difference between dream and
25:01–25:06waking is something you yourself admit, had you not, you would not even utter the phrase
25:06–25:08in a dream.
25:08–25:10What is that difference?
25:10–25:15My treatise gives the definition, hear it, dream is that state in which the coherence
25:15–25:20of agents, instruments, places, and times does not hold, the palace suddenly becomes a
25:20–25:25river, the dead grandfather speaks, and nothing surprises, waking is that state in
25:25–25:30which coherence holds, and which sublates the dream's coherence.
25:30–25:35This difference of sublator and sublated is established by experience, and only that
25:35–25:39is sublated which some stable thing is there to contradict.
25:39–25:44Dream is cut by waking, waking is cut by nothing.
25:44–25:50To put both on one scale is to stand the witness and the false witness in the same dock.
25:50–25:51Seen 2.
25:51–25:55The dispute over variegated cognition and a satire.
25:55–26:01take variegated cognition in a single cognition, blue, yellow, and red, many forms at one moment.
26:02–26:07If the forms belong to the outside, how could many mutually opposed forms sit in one cognition?
26:09–26:12Therefore the forms are cognition's own inner and there is nothing outside.
26:14–26:21Suppressing a smile, well, dear brother, is it then that, just as creatures who are born enemies,
26:21–26:26The snake and the mongoose abandon their innate hostility when they draw near the hermitage
26:26–26:32of a tranquil sage, so blue and yellow, on entering the courtyard of cognition, give up their natural
26:32–26:38opposition. Or do they keep the opposition and give up only its consequence, mutual difference?
26:39–26:46Laughter in the assembly. The truth is plain, in the cognition, blue and yellow have not become
26:46–26:50One, one cognition has taken many as its objects.
26:50–26:56My rule was only ever this, that blue must not appear as yellow, nor yellow as blue,
26:56–27:03and in variegated cognition too, blue appears precisely as blue, yellow precisely as yellow.
27:03–27:08The opposition is among the objects, and it stands intact, cognition is a mirror in
27:08–27:14which many faces appear at once, the mirror does not become the faces.
27:14–27:18But a question inside your own house, cognition is formless, the object has form, what is the
27:18–27:21relation of the two?
27:21–27:24How will a formless hand grasp a form jar?
27:24–27:30The object-subject relation, a relation established by the very natures of the two, to demand a
27:30–27:35further explanation of which is like asking what relates fire to what it burns.
27:35–27:40To hunt a relation behind every relation is the well of infinite regress, somewhere
27:40–27:45One must stop at nature itself, and this stopping is not defeat but knowledge.
27:45–27:50And a final point, which is a sword at the neck of your entire consciousness only doctrine,
27:50–27:52this debate itself.
27:52–27:58You have come to persuade me, which means there is, outside your stream of cognition, a
27:58–28:01hearer whose view can be changed.
28:01–28:06Your voice reaches my ear, which means there is an external medium called sound.
28:06–28:12If everything is the wave of your own mind alone, why this waterclock, why this assembly,
28:12–28:13why this labor?
28:13–28:17No one sweats to persuade his own dream.
28:17–28:22Along silence, then, as at that moment in the earlier play, you have found the seam
28:22–28:24of the robe again, a carrier.
28:24–28:29This pillar too is bent, but the house still stands, for the inner room remains, grant
28:29–28:33the outer world, why must there be any self that sees it?
28:33–28:37Why not seeing the lone ownerless in a stream?
28:37–28:43Now I stand on a true battlefield, the one for which this entire treatise was written.
28:43–28:45Act 5.
28:45–28:48The Noah behind the knowing.
28:48–28:53The direct and the inferential establishment of the self.
28:53–28:54Seem 1.
28:54–28:57The testimony of, I.
28:57–29:01Udyana descends from the teacher's seat and stands level with carbhadra, in the tradition
29:01–29:07of the Veda, the sign that from now on only proof will speak, not authority.
29:07–29:14Kaphadra, set aside every scripture in school. Speak only from what is given at this instant.
29:14–29:22I am tired, I have understood, I deny that I exist, in all of these, what does, I, say?
29:22–29:27A convenience of thought. A name the stream lays upon itself, like the name of a river,
29:27–29:31though apart from the water there is no river at all.
29:31–29:34Even a fiction must happen to someone.
29:34–29:40I am, this cognition is not like, the sky is blue, which might be doubted.
29:40–29:45Has anyone, ever, waking or sleeping, fool or scholar, doubted his own existence while
29:45–29:49framing the thought of his own existence?
29:49–29:54Say the sentence, I am not, and the speaker, I, stands behind the sentence, watching
29:54–29:57his own erasure.
29:57–29:59That is the ghost of grammar.
29:59–30:01It rains, what rainer?
30:01–30:07Likewise I know only knowing, dressed by grammar in the garments of an agent.
30:07–30:11Put both cases to the touchstone, and the difference will come to hand.
30:11–30:17In It Reigns, I can point to the falling water and ask, where, apart from the water, is a
30:17–30:18rainer.
30:18–30:24None will be found, because the raining and the falling of water are one event.
30:24–30:26Now the same test on knowing.
30:26–30:32A cognition of the jar has occurred, is there found, apart from the cognition, the cognition's
30:32–30:34owner?
30:34–30:38Watch yourself while hearing unwelcome news, one part of the event is the arising of the
30:38–30:44knowledge, another, separately discernible, is the resistance, would it were not so, the
30:44–30:47ownership of the discomfort?
30:47–30:52In I cut, the cutting is one thing, the cutter another, the iron does not own the
30:52–30:54wound it makes.
30:54–30:59The sickle grows blunt from cutting, the cutter does not.
30:59–31:04Just so, knowing is an act, and the agent of an act is other than the act, prior to the
31:04–31:07act, and leftover after it.
31:07–31:13Seem to, body, senses, mind, the examination of all three.
31:13–31:16Grant the agent, but let it be the body.
31:16–31:21This assembly of the five heaps, why any self beyond it.
31:21–31:24Three candidates, three examinations.
31:24–31:26The body.
31:26–31:32If self-cognition took the body merely as body, then my hand would call your hand, I, just
31:32–31:36as readily, bodies contain no such difference as could sort themselves into billions of
31:36–31:39private claims of mine.
31:39–31:43Something already marks this body as the knower's body, and the marker cannot be the body
31:43–31:47itself, on pain of the circle.
31:47–31:53In the child's body, the youth's body, the one body, three bodies, not one atom shared,
31:53–31:58yet, I, who was afraid as a child, who joined them.
31:58–31:59The senses.
31:59–32:05What I saw, I now touch, who carried the eye's object to the hand.
32:05–32:10This transfer of report from sense to sense without a common master, like two servants
32:10–32:13who know each other's accounts without any householder.
32:13–32:15The mind.
32:15–32:20Mind is an instrument, the tool of memory, pleasure, pain, and an instrument is not an
32:20–32:24agent, as the ax is not the woodsman.
32:24–32:31All three candidates have fallen, what remains, beyond body, senses, and mind, the user of
32:31–32:35all three, that alone is named the self.
32:35–32:41Seen three, memory, the trace of, I, and the store consciousness.
32:41–32:48A carrier, my old question, now sharper, what proves an owner apart from the flow of experiences?
32:48–32:51A crowd is nothing over and above the people gathered in it.
32:51–32:56Memory, and this time I will open its whole knot.
32:56–33:00The taste of a mango twenty years ago, today, it's remembering.
33:00–33:05The tasting is a dead event, the remembering belongs to today.
33:05–33:09For the remembering to be the remembering of my tasting, not alien like another's
33:09–33:16diary, one thing must be present at both ends. From experience a trace, from the trace memory,
33:16–33:22granted, but where does the trace live? The moment has died.
33:22–33:28You will say, it was handed on to the next moment. Then each handing on lasts one moment,
33:28–33:33and twenty years means billions of transfers, in each of which the entire store of traces
33:33–33:38arrives intact, what postman runs this postal system.
33:38–33:40Then why does it never once miscarry?
33:40–33:42Why does my memory never arrive in your stream?
33:42–33:46If between stream and stream there is only a causal string.
33:46–33:51Slowly, as though laying down his deepest card, some teachers of my own tradition posit for
33:51–33:56this astere consciousness, beneath the momentary surface waves, a gathering stream in which
33:56–34:00all traces are deposited, birth after birth.
34:00–34:07Then welcome, friend, you have crossed half the hall and arrived beside my own seat.
34:07–34:12the surface waves, stable beneath the momentary flashes, the gatherer of traces, the ground
34:12–34:18of memory and recognition, in Buddhist dress, this is the self's description, syllable for
34:18–34:20syllable.
34:20–34:23Change the name, if the name offends.
34:23–34:28The thing you have admitted, and my claim was always about the thing, never the name.
34:28–34:33One difference alone remains, your story you will call momentary, and then the same postman's
34:33–34:41question falls upon it, I call mine stable, and every knot unties. Where the economy lies,
34:41–34:44weigh for yourself, you who come from the tradition that taught the weighing.
34:46–34:52Carpardra does not answer. He slowly sits down upon his seat, not defeated, but weighing.
34:54–34:58Act 6 The Silence Beyond Argument
34:58–35:05God, the authority of scripture, and the nature of liberation.
35:05–35:09Seem 1, the inference of God and its objections.
35:09–35:13Grant the self, a carrier, enduring, remembering.
35:13–35:17But your treatise does not stop there, it goes as far as God.
35:17–35:21So let me hear that too, the proof?
35:21–35:27The same old, unbroken one, earth, mountains, bodies are effects, composite, barism, and
35:27–35:31effect is never without an agent, as a jar is never without a potter.
35:32–35:38The agent required, one with direct knowledge of the material cause, possessed of desire,
35:38–35:42possessed of effort. Beings like you and me cannot build a mountain,
35:42–35:46therefore that noor is omniscient, that power measureless.
35:47–35:53And my three arrows, in order. First, the pervasion is unestablished, the rule whatever
35:53–35:59is an effect has an agent you observed in jars and cloths, where the agent was embodied.
35:59–36:03The maker of mountains would be bodiless, so the provision was tied to embodied agents,
36:03–36:06and the leap to the bodiless is without warrant.
36:06–36:11Second, if the omniscient one is eternally active, why is there not creation always,
36:11–36:13why dissolution?
36:13–36:18Third, why so much suffering in the world of a compassionate maker?
36:18–36:21Three Answers, in order.
36:21–36:26First, the pervasion holds between effecthood and agenthood, not between effecthood and
36:26–36:28embodied agenthood.
36:28–36:33The body is not the mark of an agent but his instrument, and instruments vary with the
36:33–36:34work.
36:34–36:39The potter needs hands because his knowledge and will are incomplete, without a tool they
36:39–36:41do not reach the clay.
36:41–36:45He whose knowledge, will, and effort are themselves complete has no need of the
36:45–36:48body's brokerage.
36:48–36:53All agents are embodied, you could say only after seeing all agents, and that is the very
36:53–36:55point in dispute.
36:55–37:00Second, the order of creation is bound to the ripening of being's unseen merit, God
37:00–37:07is eternally capable, but the effect awaits its auxiliaries, as the seed awaits the season.
37:07–37:12Third, suffering is not God's composition but the fruit of each being's own deeds,
37:12–37:18What is the Gardener, whose seed, his tree, the planter of thorn bushes is not given mangoes,
37:18–37:23and in this there is no cruelty of the Gardener, only the reliability of the order?
37:23–37:30Seem to, the nature of liberation, is the absolute cessation of suffering worth desiring?
37:30–37:35The last question, a caria, and it is the question that made me a monk in my boyhood,
37:35–37:38what is liberation, and why is it worth wanting?
37:38–37:45school says, the absolute eradication of suffering. But hear the trap, in liberation, along with
37:45–37:53suffering, pleasure too is eradicated. No taste, no touch, no dream. Who would want so dry,
37:53–38:00so void a state? People want pleasure, and in your mocha there is not a trace of it.
38:00–38:05Silent awhile, then, in the gentlest voice of the entire play, and here, friend, the
38:05–38:09The logician must look for one moment at ordinary life.
38:09–38:14Ask the world, are pleasure and pain dealt out in equal measure?
38:14–38:19Pain does not always come attended by the means of pleasure, but pleasure.
38:19–38:23Pleasure generally comes surrounded by the means of pain.
38:23–38:28In a thing earned by Dharma, how tiny is the spark of pleasure, and how countless the
38:28–38:31rainy nights of pain spent earning in guarding it.
38:31–38:38That mixture of pleasure there is in the pain of a thorn prick, let people weigh for themselves.
38:38–38:43Even heaven's pleasure is pierced by the arrows of suffering, envy is there too, and
38:43–38:45the dread of falling.
38:45–38:49And sift the pleasure out of the pain, like grain from chaff.
38:49–38:54My treatise is answer, from a dish in which poison has been stirred into honey, not
38:54–38:59even the world's most skillful cook can eat the honey alone.
38:59–39:04the person of deep dispassion knowingly relinquishes even that grain of pleasure, just as the deeply
39:04–39:08attached runs toward a thing though he sees its faults, so the deeply detached turns away
39:08–39:12though he sees its merits.
39:12–39:15Nor is this the darkness of one who has felt nothing.
39:15–39:20What happens the instant the thorn comes out, that cessation, who has not wanted it.
39:20–39:24Who called it a dry void?
39:24–39:28Liberation is the completion of that very cessation, the complete removal of every
39:28–39:34thorn, forever. It is worth desiring, because suffering is by its very nature the object
39:34–39:40of aversion, and that alone is enough. After a long while, rising, hands joined,
39:40–39:46I came to this hall to empty out the self, a caria. Six acts have passed, and now I cannot
39:46–39:50empty even this, that someone came, nor this, that someone, having heard all this, will walk home.
39:50–39:58Then the water clock has done its work. Go and sit with the question that too is a discipline.
39:58–40:04A debate well fought ends not in one man's silence, but in both men's better thinking.
40:04–40:13Epilogue. The Stradra returns. On the stage the sack of seed, the stone, and the jar,
40:13–40:21the three witnesses still stand. Six acts and three mute witnesses, the seed which
40:21–40:25taught that fitness can wait, the stone which taught that even breaking has its
40:25–40:30causes, and the jar which standing here from morning till evening said only this
40:30–40:35I am that very one. Udayana's answer was not the last word on this stage, his
40:35–40:39opponents returned in other robes with sharper instruments and will keep
40:39–40:46returning. That is not philosophy's defeat but it's breathing. If you carry the question
40:46–40:50out of this whole not settled but sharpened, then this play, like the treatise on whose
40:50–40:55bones it stands, has done its work. All the characters exit.

Plain text

अप्मशिदिवेदा दिबेट आन दिश्छ्विमर्शक अछि। Tonight's assembly, Sutradhara, Udaya Nakharya, Karphadra, Jnanamitra, a student, a farmer, the assembly, Pariyad. An original dramatic composition divided into a prologue, six acts, each in several scenes, and an epilogue, this is not a translation of the original treatise, but an independent creative work built upon its argument structure. This is the extended form of the previously presented four act, Atmasidivada, the doctrine of momentariness now receives two full acts, the doctrine of a poha its own independent act, and the remaining three subjects a multi-scene expansion. Prologue The Stradra enters and bows to the assembly. Before the debate begins, a bow, not to that supreme lord who can be proved or disproved by argument, but to that reality which no argument can either grant or take away. What you are about to hear is not history. Udayana lived, his opponents live only in his pages, like the shadow of the arm that blocks the lamp. I have gathered all those shadows into two robes, Karphadra, the fortunate of the moment, who will speak for every teacher who held that nothing endures, and his young companion Jnanamitra, who will speak for that subtlest of Buddhist doctrines whose name is a poha, that the meaning of the word, cow, is no cowness at all, but only, the negation of the non-cow. Tonight and tomorrow this debate will run long, six acts, many scenes, because Udyana's treatise is itself long, and each of its knots demands its own time. The dispute will ask a single question in six different rooms, who is asking. Water clock, begin. Exit Act 1 The river that is not there. The inference for momentariness and the examination of capacity. Seem 1. The thesis. Udayana is seated on the teacher's seat. Carb Harder enters, accompanied by genometra. The student sits at Udayana's feet. Akaria, I will not spend the water clocks water on formalities. You tease that behind these ice sits an unmoving watcher, one and the same from the child who fears the dark to the old man who no longer does. I teach the opposite, whatever is real arises and parishes within a single moment. What you call one flame is hundreds of flames, greeting one another so quickly that no one can see where the farewell ends and the greeting begins. There is no one watcher. There is only watching, and then more watching, each time new. Then the question for which debate itself was built, proof. Not poetry, proof. An inference by the full method. Thesis, whatever is real is momentary. Reason, existence itself are Thakriya Kharitva, the capacity to perform a function. Pervasion, whatever performs a function does so only by being momentary. Example, the lamp flame. What is not momentary does nothing at all like a skyflower. And the disputed things, the jar, the mountain, the self are all real, all doing something or other. Therefore all are momentary. Keep your hand on that provision, and do not let it go, for the whole inference hangs from it. Whatever is real is momentary, where did you observe this law? In the lamp flame. A single example is not a law. The jar that lasts for years is exactly as real as the spark that lasts one moment. You must show me that there is a contradiction between enduring and being real, and your one thread to that contradiction is this word, capacity. So come, let us cut it open and see. Seem 2, the three forms of capacity. Hear the argument at its full edge. in incapacity cannot reside in one and the same thing at one and the same time. A seed lies in the granary, it produces no sprout. The very same seed in the field, meeting soil, water, and warmth, it produces a sprout. If the seed of both conditions is one, then it was at once capable and incapable, a contradiction. Therefore admit, the granary seed was one thing, the field seed another, new seeds moment by moment, and only that moment seed in which the The sprob producing capacity resided was the producer. Capacity, this word has three possible meanings, and I will place all three into your hands, one by one, to see which survives. First, capacity means the act itself, whatever is producing is thereby capable. Second, capacity means fitness for immediate production, the fitness to produce, in the very next moment. Third, capacity means mere fitness, being productive by nature, whether the auxiliaries are met with or not. Choose. Not the first, plainly, to call the acted self capacity would make reason and probandom one, and the inference would collapse into repetition. Correct, so the first is gone, and you yourself threw it away. Now the second, fitness for immediate production, only what produces in the very next moment is capable. This is your favorite meaning, because by this alone the granary seed is declared incapable. But ask yourself, does this property called immediate productivity exist at all? He gestures toward the farmer at the side of the stage, the farmer comes forward carrying his sack of seed. In this farmer's sack are a hundred seeds. On your view, every seed moment either is an immediate producer or is not. Now see the trap, what distinguishes the producing from the non-producing seed. Their form is one, their smell one, their weight one. You will say, an invisible particularity. Then I will ask, what is the proof of that invisible particularity? By seeing the effect. Then this is mutual dependence, the particularity is established from the effect, and the The law of the effect is established from the particularity. And if you admit an invisible particularity without proof, then hear the satire that stands written in the pages of my own treatise, in that case you must equally suspect that a cause may remain non-productive even with the auxiliaries present, and that the effect may arise even without them, and, in the end, suspect that a sprout may arise without any seed at all. At that point you're claimed that, we carefully examine and establish the positive and negative concomitance of cause and effect, becomes pure comedy. Plainly, a caria, I know only this much, the seed of this very sack, lying silent today, will sprout next-a. If today's seed and that day's seed are two different things, why do I guard the sack? A light ripple of laughter. And that, friends, is philosophy's greatest examination, the farmer's question. To Kaphadra, now the third meaning remains, mere fitness. The seed is by nature sprout-fit, in the granary too, it merely lacked the auxiliaries. This meaning is closest to the truth, but it kills your inference. For fitness is then one and the same in both conditions, in the granary and in the field alike. Your then has that contradiction of capable and incapable God, on which you had raised the difference of moments. The fitness endures, the seed endures, and your provision has slipped from your hand. Seen 3, the question of the auxiliaries and the nature of opposition. Taking a new front, then take it this way. Grant that seedhood itself is the regulator of causality, and that a thing becomes productive by union with the auxiliaries. But all this can apply to many things, not to one individual. In a single individual, producing and not producing, that is contradicted by perception itself. Now I have arrived at the very place where your whole school goes wrong, the nature of opposition. When does opposition occur? When two properties cannot reside in one thing at one time, by one relation. and hot in one and the same water at one and the same moment, opposition. But one and the same water cool in the morning and warm at noon, what opposition? By difference of time, opposition dissolves. Just so, the seed, non-producing in the time without auxiliaries, producing in the time with them, one seed, two times, no opposition at all. You are loading onto a difference of things the work done by a difference of times. A man sits, then stands, are the sitter and the standard two men. A lump of gold becomes a bangle, then an earring, are their three golds. Take magnitude as well, one in the same cloth is first small, then, two threads added, larger, different magnitudes at different times in one substance, people see it daily, and nowhere does opposition cry out. Then my last refuge, let the momentary thing be productive at all times, in whatever moment it exists, in that very moment it does its work, and delay is only the illusion of the series. Then every seed in the world would sprout every moment, every fire would burn the world every moment, and the thing called a granary could not exist at all. A doctrine that makes the granary impossible ought to be ashamed to repeat itself in front of a farmer. The farmer, smiling, lifts his sack and steps aside. Hear the conclusion of the act, all three meanings of capacity have been tested, the first a repetition, the second unprovable, the third against you. The provision is unestablished, and an inference standing on an unestablished provision is a bridge of sand. The lamp is trimmed. The straddle appears for a moment and announces, the second pillar of momentariness, the causelessness of destruction in the next act. Act 2. Breaking without a hammer. The doctrine of the causelessness of destruction and the establishment of persistence. Scene 1. Does destruction need no cause? With new vigor, the front of capacity has fallen granted. But my second pillar still stands, and it is stronger than the first. Hear it, destruction requires no cause at all. Why? Because whatever has arisen, its destruction is inevitable, and what is inevitable is not dependent on a cause. What depends on a cause sometimes happens and sometimes does not, like rain. But destruction? Destruction comes to everything, always, without exception. Therefore destruction is the very nature of the thing, and if destruction is its nature, the thing perishes the instant it arises, momentariness established by another road. A beautiful argument, and its beauty is its trap. Inevitable, therefore causeless, where did you bring this law from? Death too is inevitable, does death have no causes? Disease, old age, the weapon, the science of medicine lies full of the causes of death. Inevitability says only this much, that some cause or other will certainly assemble, not that no cause is needed at all. And now put your hand into the belly of your own doctrine, if destruction is causeless, why did this jar, he lifts the jar, not break at this very moment? Why not the moment before? What happens without a cause either happens always or never, because only a cause answers the question, when. You will say, it is breaking, moment by moment. Then what will this do? He lifts the stone from the side of the stage. Why do people raise a stick to break a jar, if the jar by its own nature is already shattering every moment? In your doctrine the stick is the most useless object in the world, and yet everyone from the Potter to the King relies on it. The stick does not destroy, the stick merely begins a dissimilar series. The stream of Jar moments was flowing, the stick struck, and the stream of Shard moments began. Destruction was each moment's own nature all along. Then destruction and the beginning of a dissimilar series, two words, two things, and what the world calls, the Jar broke, is, on your view, no destruction, only a bend in the stream. So I ask, is that bend caused or uncaused? Caused, then the stick is its cause, and you have handed me half my house, for you have admitted a cause of the very thing the world calls destruction. Uncaused, then the stick is useless again, and I have arrived once more at that farmer's courtyard where every one of your doctrines goes to stub its toe. to, the destruction and the destroyed thing non-different. Then descend deeper. I say, there is no difference at all between destruction and the thing destroyed. Destruction is no separate event, it is the thing's own final moment itself. Therefore asking forth the cause of destruction is as meaningless as asking forth the cause of a thing's thinghood. If destruction and the thing are non-different, then as long as the thing exists, its destruction exists, as long as the jar is, the jar's destruction also is. Then the jar exists and the jar has perished, both sentences true at one and the same time, and language, practice, buying and selling all collapse. Will the potter sell the jar, or the jar's destruction? And if you say the destruction is subsequent to the thing, then the very word, subsequent, As admitted the difference, the thing first, the destruction after, two times, two bearers of properties. The non-difference position has sat down under its own weight. A carrier, then what is destruction? The cessation of its counter positive, that absence of the thing which comes after the thing in which has causes, the stick, fire, time. Destruction is caused, and therefore the thing endures exactly as long as the causes of its destruction do not assemble. That is what persistence is. No mystery, only the plain statement that, as long as it has not broken, it is. Seen 3. Recognition. The positive proof of persistence. And now I will not only demolish, I will build. The positive proof of persistence is recognition, Pradyabhijna, this is that very jar which I saw yesterday. This cognition does not say, one like it, it says, this very one. Between similarity cognition and identity cognition there is the difference of sky and earth, this is like that, and this is that very thing, in the first, two objects, in the second, one. And people never confuse the two, one who sees twin brothers and says, the very same is counted mistaken, while one who says, the very same of his own old jar is counted right. Recognition is an illusion born of similarity. The later moment jar resembling the earlier moment jar and the stream unbroken in between from just this arises the sense of the very same. An illusion. Then show me its defeat or illusion is the name for what is cancelled at a later time, the appearance of a snake in a rope, canceled when the light comes. This is that jar, when, by whom, in what light was this cognition ever canceled? Your cancellation is only your doctrine, and experience is not cut by doctrine, doctrine is cut by experience. A second point, if recognition is an illusion, what is your own cognition of the series? To recognize the stream as a stream is likewise to join two moments and view them together, and if the joiner is himself momentary, who will do the joining. The ladder by which you have climbed to break my roof belongs to my own courtyard. Carp-harder is silent for a while. The sound of the water-clock's dripping can be heard. Quietly, both pillars have shaken, a carrier, to admit it is honesty. But there There is one more arrow in my quiver, and it will fly not at outer objects, but at words. My companion Nana Mitra is its archer. Stradra, the doctrine of a poha, the next act. Act 3. The net of negations. The examination of the doctrine of a poha is a word meaning only, the negation of the other. Seem 1, Jananamitra's position. Geometry, young and sharp, at the speaker's place for the first time. Akaria Udayana. For two acts you have wielded the words jar, seed, cow without fear. As though behind every word stood some stable universal, countless, jarnis, seedness. I will lay the acts at that foundation. What is understood on hearing the word cow is no real countless at all, only the exclusion of the non-cow. which is not other than cow. A word's work is to put up a fence. Not to plant anything in the middle. Why believe this? Because the thing called a universal does not survive examination. One cowness in many cows, if it resides completely, then the whole of cowness in one cow and what is left for the second. If it resides by parts, parts of the partless? When a new cow is born, Does Countess travel there? Or was it there already? When a cow dies, does Countess die? Or is it widowed? Every answer is laughable. Therefore the intelligent road drop the universal, take the negation, cow means not non-cow. To the student with affection, the young archer's arrow flies straight and I will catch it with respect. To Namitra, first question, and in it lies half your answer, non-cow, what does this term mean? The negation of cow. And cow. The negation of non-cow. Then cow equals that which is the negation of the negation of cow. The thing to be defined has circled back inside its own definition. This is mutual dependence, and you have only one escape from it, somewhere, at some point, admit some positive, affirmative, meaning, from which the net of negations can be tied. Even to put up a fence, one needs the whereabouts of the field. The exclusions differ among themselves, cow exclusion is one thing, horse exclusion another, and by this very difference practice will run without any positive meaning. Difference among exclusions. On what basis? This is the difference of the difference of the difference of cow from horse and the difference of cow from horse. On your view, that too rests on exclusions. The circle again. This dance of negation upon negation will spin forever, and nowhere will there be ground to set a foot. The circle again. The circle again. The circle again. The circle again. The circle again. The circle again. The circle again. The circle again. The circle again. The circle again. foot. And plain experience gives its testimony directly, when a child recognizes a cow for the first time, does he do so by negating all the non-cows of the world, the horse, the elephant, the camel, which he has never even seen. He simply sees something, the horns, the muzzle, that build, something positive, which shines in every cow. Cognition is affirmative, negation is its shadow, not its body. Seem to, the defense of the universal. Then answer my acts, all those questions. One in many, how? Whence countess in the newborn cow? I will, and the key to the answer is this, do not weigh the universal on the scales of substance. Coming and going, belongs to substance, the universal's mode of being is residence, not motion. The lamp's light throughout the room, has the light been divided? Space in every jar, has space been cut into pieces. One residing completely in many, this sits oddly with substance thinking, because substance does not behave so, but this is precisely the universal's own nature, and against a nature no, why, runs, just as you do not ask why fire is hot. A new cow is born, Countess did not go there, that cow became Countess new locus, just as when a new house is built, space did not arrive in it. And the proof. The recurrent cognition, this is a cow, this is a cow, this is a cow, a cognition of one and the same form across different individuals. This cognition cannot be objectless, and its object is not the individuals, for the The individuals differ, therefore its object is that one recurrent property, the universal. The very experience that a poha is forced to acknowledge establishes the universal directly, you abandon the straight road and, circling backward, arrive at the same place, picking negation thorns the whole way. Not yielding, but activity? People here bring a cow and walk toward a cow. If the word's object is a universal, then let them fetch countless, and countless cannot be tied with a rope. And this is my final answer, which my tradition will repeat down to Gagia, the word's object is the individual qualified by the universal, the cow possessed of countless. Neither bear countless, nor the bear individual, than not of the two. Therefore on hearing, bring a cow, a person fetches the horned one, and no list of the negations of non-cows is ever required of him. To Namitra, gently, your axe was sharp, archer, but the rudic struck turned out to be stone. Jnometra bows and sits. Carp harder rises, his bearing has now changed. Act 4 The Hall of Mirrors The examination of the denial of external objects, the doctrine of consciousness only. one, the argument from dream. Now my deepest fortress, a carrier. So much debate about outer things, but is there an outer at all? When you dream of a garden, is the garden outside? No. And yet the dream garden feels exactly as outside as this hall does now. The sense of outwardness is the same in both, and if that sense can occur in dream without any outer object, What compels us to posit outer objects in waking? Cognition takes on the blue and yellow forms by itself. Look at the rule of co-apprehension. Blue and the cognition of blue are always apprehended together, has blue ever been found without cognition? What are always together are non-different. Blue is nothing but cognition. Non-difference from co-apprehension. Then the lamp and the jar seen by the lamp are also always apprehended together, has the jar become the lamp? The plain meaning of joint apprehension is that one is the instrument of grasping the other, cognition is the instrument, blew the object. To extract identity from the constant companionship of instrument and object is to call the scale and the thing weighed one. And at the root of the dream argument lies an ax, the difference between dream and waking is something you yourself admit, had you not, you would not even utter the phrase in a dream. What is that difference? My treatise gives the definition, hear it, dream is that state in which the coherence of agents, instruments, places, and times does not hold, the palace suddenly becomes a river, the dead grandfather speaks, and nothing surprises, waking is that state in which coherence holds, and which sublates the dream's coherence. This difference of sublator and sublated is established by experience, and only that is sublated which some stable thing is there to contradict. Dream is cut by waking, waking is cut by nothing. To put both on one scale is to stand the witness and the false witness in the same dock. Seen 2. The dispute over variegated cognition and a satire. take variegated cognition in a single cognition, blue, yellow, and red, many forms at one moment. If the forms belong to the outside, how could many mutually opposed forms sit in one cognition? Therefore the forms are cognition's own inner and there is nothing outside. Suppressing a smile, well, dear brother, is it then that, just as creatures who are born enemies, The snake and the mongoose abandon their innate hostility when they draw near the hermitage of a tranquil sage, so blue and yellow, on entering the courtyard of cognition, give up their natural opposition. Or do they keep the opposition and give up only its consequence, mutual difference? Laughter in the assembly. The truth is plain, in the cognition, blue and yellow have not become One, one cognition has taken many as its objects. My rule was only ever this, that blue must not appear as yellow, nor yellow as blue, and in variegated cognition too, blue appears precisely as blue, yellow precisely as yellow. The opposition is among the objects, and it stands intact, cognition is a mirror in which many faces appear at once, the mirror does not become the faces. But a question inside your own house, cognition is formless, the object has form, what is the relation of the two? How will a formless hand grasp a form jar? The object-subject relation, a relation established by the very natures of the two, to demand a further explanation of which is like asking what relates fire to what it burns. To hunt a relation behind every relation is the well of infinite regress, somewhere One must stop at nature itself, and this stopping is not defeat but knowledge. And a final point, which is a sword at the neck of your entire consciousness only doctrine, this debate itself. You have come to persuade me, which means there is, outside your stream of cognition, a hearer whose view can be changed. Your voice reaches my ear, which means there is an external medium called sound. If everything is the wave of your own mind alone, why this waterclock, why this assembly, why this labor? No one sweats to persuade his own dream. Along silence, then, as at that moment in the earlier play, you have found the seam of the robe again, a carrier. This pillar too is bent, but the house still stands, for the inner room remains, grant the outer world, why must there be any self that sees it? Why not seeing the lone ownerless in a stream? Now I stand on a true battlefield, the one for which this entire treatise was written. Act 5. The Noah behind the knowing. The direct and the inferential establishment of the self. Seem 1. The testimony of, I. Udyana descends from the teacher's seat and stands level with carbhadra, in the tradition of the Veda, the sign that from now on only proof will speak, not authority. Kaphadra, set aside every scripture in school. Speak only from what is given at this instant. I am tired, I have understood, I deny that I exist, in all of these, what does, I, say? A convenience of thought. A name the stream lays upon itself, like the name of a river, though apart from the water there is no river at all. Even a fiction must happen to someone. I am, this cognition is not like, the sky is blue, which might be doubted. Has anyone, ever, waking or sleeping, fool or scholar, doubted his own existence while framing the thought of his own existence? Say the sentence, I am not, and the speaker, I, stands behind the sentence, watching his own erasure. That is the ghost of grammar. It rains, what rainer? Likewise I know only knowing, dressed by grammar in the garments of an agent. Put both cases to the touchstone, and the difference will come to hand. In It Reigns, I can point to the falling water and ask, where, apart from the water, is a rainer. None will be found, because the raining and the falling of water are one event. Now the same test on knowing. A cognition of the jar has occurred, is there found, apart from the cognition, the cognition's owner? Watch yourself while hearing unwelcome news, one part of the event is the arising of the knowledge, another, separately discernible, is the resistance, would it were not so, the ownership of the discomfort? In I cut, the cutting is one thing, the cutter another, the iron does not own the wound it makes. The sickle grows blunt from cutting, the cutter does not. Just so, knowing is an act, and the agent of an act is other than the act, prior to the act, and leftover after it. Seem to, body, senses, mind, the examination of all three. Grant the agent, but let it be the body. This assembly of the five heaps, why any self beyond it. Three candidates, three examinations. The body. If self-cognition took the body merely as body, then my hand would call your hand, I, just as readily, bodies contain no such difference as could sort themselves into billions of private claims of mine. Something already marks this body as the knower's body, and the marker cannot be the body itself, on pain of the circle. In the child's body, the youth's body, the one body, three bodies, not one atom shared, yet, I, who was afraid as a child, who joined them. The senses. What I saw, I now touch, who carried the eye's object to the hand. This transfer of report from sense to sense without a common master, like two servants who know each other's accounts without any householder. The mind. Mind is an instrument, the tool of memory, pleasure, pain, and an instrument is not an agent, as the ax is not the woodsman. All three candidates have fallen, what remains, beyond body, senses, and mind, the user of all three, that alone is named the self. Seen three, memory, the trace of, I, and the store consciousness. A carrier, my old question, now sharper, what proves an owner apart from the flow of experiences? A crowd is nothing over and above the people gathered in it. Memory, and this time I will open its whole knot. The taste of a mango twenty years ago, today, it's remembering. The tasting is a dead event, the remembering belongs to today. For the remembering to be the remembering of my tasting, not alien like another's diary, one thing must be present at both ends. From experience a trace, from the trace memory, granted, but where does the trace live? The moment has died. You will say, it was handed on to the next moment. Then each handing on lasts one moment, and twenty years means billions of transfers, in each of which the entire store of traces arrives intact, what postman runs this postal system. Then why does it never once miscarry? Why does my memory never arrive in your stream? If between stream and stream there is only a causal string. Slowly, as though laying down his deepest card, some teachers of my own tradition posit for this astere consciousness, beneath the momentary surface waves, a gathering stream in which all traces are deposited, birth after birth. Then welcome, friend, you have crossed half the hall and arrived beside my own seat. the surface waves, stable beneath the momentary flashes, the gatherer of traces, the ground of memory and recognition, in Buddhist dress, this is the self's description, syllable for syllable. Change the name, if the name offends. The thing you have admitted, and my claim was always about the thing, never the name. One difference alone remains, your story you will call momentary, and then the same postman's question falls upon it, I call mine stable, and every knot unties. Where the economy lies, weigh for yourself, you who come from the tradition that taught the weighing. Carpardra does not answer. He slowly sits down upon his seat, not defeated, but weighing. Act 6 The Silence Beyond Argument God, the authority of scripture, and the nature of liberation. Seem 1, the inference of God and its objections. Grant the self, a carrier, enduring, remembering. But your treatise does not stop there, it goes as far as God. So let me hear that too, the proof? The same old, unbroken one, earth, mountains, bodies are effects, composite, barism, and effect is never without an agent, as a jar is never without a potter. The agent required, one with direct knowledge of the material cause, possessed of desire, possessed of effort. Beings like you and me cannot build a mountain, therefore that noor is omniscient, that power measureless. And my three arrows, in order. First, the pervasion is unestablished, the rule whatever is an effect has an agent you observed in jars and cloths, where the agent was embodied. The maker of mountains would be bodiless, so the provision was tied to embodied agents, and the leap to the bodiless is without warrant. Second, if the omniscient one is eternally active, why is there not creation always, why dissolution? Third, why so much suffering in the world of a compassionate maker? Three Answers, in order. First, the pervasion holds between effecthood and agenthood, not between effecthood and embodied agenthood. The body is not the mark of an agent but his instrument, and instruments vary with the work. The potter needs hands because his knowledge and will are incomplete, without a tool they do not reach the clay. He whose knowledge, will, and effort are themselves complete has no need of the body's brokerage. All agents are embodied, you could say only after seeing all agents, and that is the very point in dispute. Second, the order of creation is bound to the ripening of being's unseen merit, God is eternally capable, but the effect awaits its auxiliaries, as the seed awaits the season. Third, suffering is not God's composition but the fruit of each being's own deeds, What is the Gardener, whose seed, his tree, the planter of thorn bushes is not given mangoes, and in this there is no cruelty of the Gardener, only the reliability of the order? Seem to, the nature of liberation, is the absolute cessation of suffering worth desiring? The last question, a caria, and it is the question that made me a monk in my boyhood, what is liberation, and why is it worth wanting? school says, the absolute eradication of suffering. But hear the trap, in liberation, along with suffering, pleasure too is eradicated. No taste, no touch, no dream. Who would want so dry, so void a state? People want pleasure, and in your mocha there is not a trace of it. Silent awhile, then, in the gentlest voice of the entire play, and here, friend, the The logician must look for one moment at ordinary life. Ask the world, are pleasure and pain dealt out in equal measure? Pain does not always come attended by the means of pleasure, but pleasure. Pleasure generally comes surrounded by the means of pain. In a thing earned by Dharma, how tiny is the spark of pleasure, and how countless the rainy nights of pain spent earning in guarding it. That mixture of pleasure there is in the pain of a thorn prick, let people weigh for themselves. Even heaven's pleasure is pierced by the arrows of suffering, envy is there too, and the dread of falling. And sift the pleasure out of the pain, like grain from chaff. My treatise is answer, from a dish in which poison has been stirred into honey, not even the world's most skillful cook can eat the honey alone. the person of deep dispassion knowingly relinquishes even that grain of pleasure, just as the deeply attached runs toward a thing though he sees its faults, so the deeply detached turns away though he sees its merits. Nor is this the darkness of one who has felt nothing. What happens the instant the thorn comes out, that cessation, who has not wanted it. Who called it a dry void? Liberation is the completion of that very cessation, the complete removal of every thorn, forever. It is worth desiring, because suffering is by its very nature the object of aversion, and that alone is enough. After a long while, rising, hands joined, I came to this hall to empty out the self, a caria. Six acts have passed, and now I cannot empty even this, that someone came, nor this, that someone, having heard all this, will walk home. Then the water clock has done its work. Go and sit with the question that too is a discipline. A debate well fought ends not in one man's silence, but in both men's better thinking. Epilogue. The Stradra returns. On the stage the sack of seed, the stone, and the jar, the three witnesses still stand. Six acts and three mute witnesses, the seed which taught that fitness can wait, the stone which taught that even breaking has its causes, and the jar which standing here from morning till evening said only this I am that very one. Udayana's answer was not the last word on this stage, his opponents returned in other robes with sharper instruments and will keep returning. That is not philosophy's defeat but it's breathing. If you carry the question out of this whole not settled but sharpened, then this play, like the treatise on whose bones it stands, has done its work. All the characters exit.

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