Part 10: Refutation of Kṣaṇikavāda

Then Svayambuddha said: “There is no object free from continuity. For water, grass, etc., make cow’s milk surely. There is not a single object here that has no continuity, like a flower in the sky or hair on a tortoise. Therefore the doctrine of instant perishing is false. If an object perishes instantly, then why does its issue not perish instantly? Whence is there momentariness of the whole, when its issue is permanent? If all things are transitory, how pray arises the demand for a return of a deposit, or memory and recognition? In the perishing at the moment of birth, an incongruity arises in the second moment, ‘There is no son to the parents and no parents of the son.’ ‘There is no husband to the wife and no wife to the husband,’ is an inconsistency of the husband and wife perishing immediately after the time of marriage. If a person who commits a crime here does not experience the result in the next world, but another experiences it, then there is destruction of what was done and acquisition of what was not done.”