Verse 540

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation by Ganganath Jha:

क्षणभेदविकल्पेन क्षणनाशादि चोद्यते ।
यच्चैव नैवानिष्टं तु किञ्चिदापादितं परैः ॥ ५४० ॥

kṣaṇabhedavikalpena kṣaṇanāśādi codyate |
yaccaiva naivāniṣṭaṃ tu kiñcidāpāditaṃ paraiḥ || 540 ||

What is urged against us, by setting forth the alternative of things being different every moment, is the fact of everything undergoing destruction at every moment and so forth. But by urging all this the other party have not put forward anything that is disagreeable to us.—(540)

 

Kamalaśīla’s commentary (tattvasaṃgrahapañjikā):

Kumārila has argued as follows:—“When we speak of ‘the waste of what is done and the befalling of what is not done’, we do not mean that the said anomaly is due to the act done by a certain Doer being destroyed,—for the simple reason that under your view, there is no Doer; what we mean is that, inasmuch as you hold the destruction of the Act and the production of its Result to be absolute,—this is what involves the said anomaly of ‘the waste of what is done and the befalling of what is not done’,” [See Ślokavārtika, Ātmavāda 12 et seq.]

In answer to this the Author proceeds to show that the said anomaly in this last form is what is actually admitted by the Buddhist and hence it is not right to put that forward to him as an undesirable contingency:—[see verse 540 above]

“The preceding Action-Moment being absolutely destroyed, there is ‘waste of what is done’;—and then an absolutely new Result-Moment being produced, there is ‘befalling of what is not done’”,—if such is the anomaly that is urged against us, through the setting forth of alternatives relating to the momentary change in things,—then what is urged against us is what is quite agreeable to us. In fact, we are going to show that there is no continuity of the slightest trace of any part of anything at all.—(540)