Sūtra 10.1.5 (Pleasure and Pain are not forms of cognition—continued)

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration, Word-for-word and English translation of Vaiśeṣika sūtra 10.1.4:

सति च कार्यादर्शनात् ॥ १०.१.५ ॥

sati ca kāryādarśanāt || 10.1.5 ||

sati—existing; ca—also; kārya-adarśanāt—be cause of the non-observation of the effect.

5. Also (Pleasure and Pain are not forms of cognition), inasmuch as the effect, (pleasure or pain), is not observed, where (the antecedents of cognition) are present.

Commentary: The Upaskāra of Śaṅkara Miśra:

(English rendering of Śaṅkara Miśra’s commentary called Upaskāra from the 15th century)

He brings forward a further ground of differentiation:

[Read sūtra 10.1.4 above]

Pleasure or pain is not merely perception or merely inferential cognition, since the effect, pleasure or pain, is not observed, where contact of the senses and objects exists, or where there is recognition of the universal concomitance (which is the ground of inference), of the mark of inference being a property of the minor term, etc. The meaning, therefore, is as follows: It has been already stated that pleasure and pain are not cognition in general, (i.e., non-discriminative cognition). Should they be cognition in particular (or discriminative cognition), they would be either perceptual cognition or cognition in the form of inference. (Pleasure and pain cannot be the former), inasmuch as the experience of the element of pleasure does not take place during the perception of garlands, sandal-paste, etc., on the contact of the senses and their object; nor can they be the latter, since there is no experience of the pleasurable or the painful, as the case may be, where there exists an inference respecting sandal-paste, etc., or an inference respecting fire, etc. In like manner, pleasure and pain being not experienced in any particular act of perception or in particular act of inference, they are also not the particulars of that perception or that inference.—5.

Commentary: The Bhāṣya of Candrakānta:

(English translation of Candrakānta Tarkālaṅkāra’s Bhāṣya called the Vaiśeṣikabhāṣya from the 19th century)

Candrakānta reads Satica of X.i.5 as a separate aphorism, and explains it thus: Cognition arises, Sati, i.e., in respect of objects actually existing at the moment. Cognition accordingly relates to past, present, and future objects. But this is not the case with pleasure and pain. Herein also, therefore, there is difference between cognition, on the one hand, and pleasure and pain, on the other.