Verse 2.141

Sanskrit text and transliteration:

ब्रह्मणोऽन्यदतः सर्वं कार्यत्वेन विवक्ष्यते ।
ब्रह्मणोऽकारणत्वाच्च सृष्टौ हेतोरसम्भवः ॥ १४१ ॥

brahmaṇo'nyadataḥ sarvaṃ kāryatvena vivakṣyate |
brahmaṇo'kāraṇatvācca sṛṣṭau hetorasambhavaḥ || 141 ||

English translation of verse 2.141:

All things other than Brahman should, for that very reason, be regarded as effects. And, since Brahman is immutable, there can be no cause for creation.

Notes:

It may be, the critic may urge, that the nature of Brahman is such that it cannot be the cause of the world. But this is no reason for denying the existence of a cause for the world. The world, being an effect, must have a cause. And so the creation of the world, it may be argued, cannot be set aside as unreal.

This argument does not held good. The difficulty which arises here is that there is no object which could be considered to be the cause of the world. Two possibilities may be thought of here, but neither of them is tenable. Either something other than Brahman is the cause of the world or Brahman itself is the cause of the world. It cannot be said that something other than Brahman is the cause of the world. We are in search of the root cause (mūla-kāraṇa) of the world. Since all objects other than Brahman are effects, none of them could be thought of as the root cause. Nor does the other alternative hold good. Being immutable (kūṭastha) Brahman cannot be the cause of the world. There is no effect in the absence of a cause (kāraṇābhāve kāryābhāvāt). Since there is no cause for the world, it cannot be said that the world really exists or that the creation of the world is real.

Ānandagiri explains the word akāraṇa which occurs in the second line of the verse as kūṭastha.