Verse 3495

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

न युक्तं नाहमित्येवं यद्यहं नाम विद्यते ।
नियमात्तत्त्वविद्याति निर्वाणमिति वा मृषा ॥ ३४९५ ॥

na yuktaṃ nāhamityevaṃ yadyahaṃ nāma vidyate |
niyamāttattvavidyāti nirvāṇamiti vā mṛṣā || 3495 ||

The notion ‘i am not’ cannot be right if the ‘i’ really exists. or else, it is not true ‘that one who knows the truth must attain nirvāṇa.—(3495)

 

Kamalaśīla’s commentary (tattvasaṃgrahapañjikā):

Further, there may be repudiation of it either as being the source of suffering or as something else; even so there could he no cessation of the I-notion whose sole root lies in the notion of the ‘Soul’.—This is what is pointed out in the following:—[see verse 3495 above]

‘I am not’—This idea that ‘I am not’ cannot be right;—‘if the I really exists’,—i.e. if the Soul exists.

Hence that your ‘knower of Truth’ attains Nirvāṇa cannot be true; because Liberation has been held to follow from the cessation of the ‘I-notion’, and so long as the ‘Soul’ is there as the object of that notion, there can be no cessation of the ‘I-notion’; how then could there be Liberation?—(3495)