The Effect Already in the Cause

Next, the refutation of the Sāṃkhya position should be understood. If you say that because the effect already exists within the cause, our claim that the means of valid cognition cannot be established, and that instead all dharmas possess self-nature — this does not hold. Why? Because cause and effect would then be a single substance. You hold that the effect already exists within self-nature as cause, and that self-nature already exists within all dharmas as their effect, and it is on this basis that self-nature can be inferred. If so, are cause and effect one, or different? If one, then, being a single substance with no distinction, they could not serve to infer one another at all. If you say cause and effect are not one, then you contradict your own position. If the effect definitely already exists within the cause, two faults follow: first, since the cause would then simply be the effect, the cause is lost — self-nature being one and the same, what remains is only the effect; how, then, could there be a cause at all? Second, if the effect already exists, what use is the cause? The effect is supposed to arise from the cause in the first place — but if the effect already exists, what further use would there be for the cause? If you say that, because the cause exists, self-nature is not thereby lost — this does not hold either. Why? Because self-nature would then have no place to be located at all. If you say self-nature is located in the "solid" and "space" regions of the unmanifest, why do you then say there is no place for it? This does not hold. Why? Because the regions of the "solid" and of "space" do not yet exist prior to manifestation. The "solid" refers to the four great elements together with the four subtle elements, eight substances in all; "space" refers to the space-element and the sound-quality, two substances. Since these five great elements and five subtle elements, in their two regions, do not yet exist before manifestation, where could self-nature be established at all? Before self-nature undergoes its transformation into manifest form, the five subtle elements and five great elements have not yet come to exist. The space-element constitutes the "space" region, the four great elements the "solid" region — but before either of these two regions yet existed, where, on your account, was self-nature situated?

If you say that, prior to manifestation, self-nature simply does not yet have the space and solid regions — this does not hold either. Why? Because this contradicts the very basis of causal production. If, before transformation, the space and solid regions did not yet exist, then self-nature would have no locus for its causal function. If it is only at the moment of transformation that the space and solid regions first come to exist, and only then does the causal function occur, then it would be the transformation itself that gives rise to self-nature, rather than the reverse. If you say that, at that time, these two regions did not yet exist either, this does not hold either. Why? Because causation itself is not established — what, then, would even come first? If you say that nothing at all precedes self-nature, this does not hold, because self-nature would then have no locus whatsoever, and to have no locus contradicts your own scriptural authority. The sage Kapila taught the brāhmaṇa Āsuri: "In the beginning there was only a single darkness, within which there was only intellect." Since, on your own analysis, there is, in fact, no place for self-nature at all, this directly contradicts your own scripture. Neither self-nature nor the self can be established — by what analogy, then, could self-nature ever be established?

If you say that the third category, the unmanifest state itself, serves as the analogy that establishes self-nature — this too does not hold. Why? Because it carries two faults: first, it loses its own foundational meaning; second, causal nature is not thereby established. If you say that "non-difference" between transformation and self-nature is itself the analogy — this does not hold, because the third category is not established in the first place. If you say that it is precisely because of non-difference that the third category is established — this is not so either, for this involves nothing but an appeal to mere numbering without real distinction. If you say instead that number itself truly exists as a real category — this directly contradicts your own foundational position. And if your own foundational teaching held that number itself constitutes meaning — this too does not hold. Why? Because when number ceases, meaning would collapse along with it; transformation and self-nature would then be non-different, so that neither "as manifest" nor "as not-manifest" could be established at all. Since self-nature and its transformations would have no distinguishing difference, then cause and effect being one could not be established either.

If you say that, if cause and effect were truly one, there would be no meaningful speech at all, and so my objection itself would likewise have no force — note that if cause and effect are different, the "oneness" thesis does not hold either. Why? Because three faults follow: first, self-contradiction of your own position; second, self-inversion; third, speech without cause. As to the first: here I now take your own principle and turn it back against you — do you believe my objection, or not? If you believe it, your own position collapses. If you do not believe it, then your objection against me is likewise no objection at all. How do we know this? Because it is by means of my objection that your statement is able to have any force in the first place — and if your position is thereby established, my own position is equally established. As for your own thesis, at what time does it hold — before my objection, after it, or simultaneously with it? If before, I had not yet raised my objection — against whom, then, were you arguing? If after my objection, my own position is already established — how, then, could your position still stand? If simultaneous, there is no subject and object at all, as when river-water and sea-water merge together all at once — how could any distinction between them be drawn? In every case, your position and mine turn out to be indistinguishable, which is to say, my own position stands. As to the second, self-inversion: you take up the notion of "arising" to challenge my notion of "revealing" — but this is not the proper point to press. If I had put forward a thesis of arising, you could rightly challenge me using the three times, before, after, and simultaneous, since anything called "arising" cannot escape falling into one of the three. But "revealing" is established on the basis of reasoning, not of arising: if there is sound reasoning, the three times make no difference to it; if there is no sound reasoning, nothing can be revealed at all — in which case the failure lies in the reasoning, not in the three times. You have used the framework of time to challenge a matter of reasoning, and this is exactly what turns your own argument inside out. As to the third, speech without cause: speech is established by depending on meaning; without meaning, speech cannot be established. If the thesis that cause and effect are a single substance cannot be established, there is no meaning to your speech at all.

If you say instead that they exist as cause and as effect — this does not hold either. Why? Because this incurs the fault of impermanence: since the effect is impermanent, the cause would have to be so as well; and if the cause is impermanent, this contradicts your own foundational position, which holds that the cause is permanent while the effect alone is impermanent — yet the effect's transformations of color and the rest can never actually be found apart from the cause changing too. If you say that, because it can be inferred by way of color, it is therefore not unfindable — this too does not hold, because what is to be inferred does not actually exist, as refuted above. Since direct perception cannot be established, inference built upon it cannot be established either; and since the space and solid regions do not yet exist, the cause has no locus, and so cannot be established. If you say that inference can be established even without anything to be inferred, as inference admits four possibilities — inferring the absent from the present, the present from the absent, the present from the present, and the absent from the absent — this does not hold. On such a view, even a barren woman's son or a rabbit's horn ought to be inferable — of what use, then, is the distinction between what can and cannot be established by direct perception? This inference has no rational basis, and so cannot be established. If you say that, just as one infers the atomic cause from its aggregate effect, self-nature can likewise be inferred, this does not hold either, because the atom itself cannot be established, because cause and effect are different, and because self-nature, apart from color and the rest, cannot be found. If you say self-nature is grasped neither by direct perception nor by inference, as underground water cannot itself be seen yet its presence is known, and that self-nature and the self are known in just this way — this does not hold either. Why? If you could infer tortoise-hair from the son of a barren woman, then I would believe that you could infer self-nature from the atom. If you say that, just as a lamp establishes itself, so too does this inference establish itself — this does not hold either. Why? Because, apart from its eight constituent substances, a lamp cannot even be perceived at all. Just as the atom, apart from color and the rest, cannot be found, so too the self-nature to be inferred cannot be found — hence we know there is no self-nature.

If you say that, because memory exists, direct perception and inference are both thereby established — for without direct perception and inference, what would there be to remember? — this does not hold. If memory could exist apart from three kinds of cognition, direct perception and inference could not be established through it. The three kinds are: cognition of a different object, cognition by a different subject, and cognition as a single, undivided act. As to cognition of a different object: if a person sees a pot and afterward remembers a robe, this is not what we mean by "remembering." Your position amounts to the same thing: color is one thing, and the self, the alleged rememberer, is a different thing — having once seen a form, the self would then simply remember "a pot," with no real connecting link between them, and so this cannot be right. As to cognition by a different subject: it would be as if Zhang were the one who saw the pot, and Wang were the one who later remembered it — this makes no sense at all. Your position amounts to the same thing: cognition takes hold of the object, while the self does the remembering, these being two entirely distinct kinds of thing; the cognition sees it first, and the self remembers it afterward, and there is no coherent sense in which this could work. As to cognition as a single, undivided act: when a person is directly looking at a pot, no memory can arise at that very moment — and if memory could occur then, two faults would follow: first, two cognitions cannot arise simultaneously within a single mind, since the mind is one — when the mind is taking hold of a visible form, it cannot, at that same moment, be taking hold of a sound. Second, while the sense-faculty is still engaged with its object and has not yet released it, how could one, at the same time, remember some other object? Your notion of cognition is likewise held to be a single, undivided cognition, without arising and ceasing moment by moment, remaining one and the same from the very beginning of manifestation until the very threshold of liberation — and within such an unchanging cognition, there could be no memory at all. Only by reversing all three of these points can memory be properly established: the object remembered and the object originally cognized must belong to the same class, the cognizing subject must be of the same class across the two moments, and cognition must perish moment by moment rather than remaining a single undivided act. Only when these three conditions are met can memory be established. Since memory cannot be established on your system, direct perception and inference and the other means of valid cognition built upon it cannot be established either — and for this reason, the thesis of self-nature collapses.

If you say that memory is grounded in self-nature, and that on this basis identity, difference, existence, and non-existence can all be established: in the first moment of cognition, three factors are complete at once — the object, the person, and the cognition — all present together simultaneously. By the second moment, the first three have already ceased, and a second set of three continues to arise; since the earlier and later sets belong to the same class, this constitutes their "identity"; since each, considered separately, is itself a single unit, this too constitutes a kind of "identity"; since the earlier set is absent while the later set is present, this constitutes their "difference"; since the earlier set is able to give rise to the later, this constitutes "existence"; and since the earlier set has ceased when the later arises, this constitutes "non-existence." It is because all these senses are thus complete that memory exists — and it is by means of self-nature that memory is thereby established, so runs the objection. Insider: If that is so, I am delighted — for this simply turns into my own position, and there is nothing lost by it at all. This is precisely the reasoning by which I say there is no self-nature: just as an earlier grain-seed gives rise to a later grain, this earlier and later grain are neither one nor two, neither existent nor non-existent. If they were one, there would be no "earlier" and "later" at all; if they were entirely different, then the earlier could be grain and the later could turn out to be beans — hence they are neither simply one nor simply different. As for self-nature being neither existent nor non-existent: it is because the cause ceases as the effect arises — since the cause has ceased, it does not truly persist as existent, and since the effect has newly arisen, it is not simply non-existent either. At the time of the cause, the effect does not yet exist, so it cannot be said to already exist; yet when the effect arises, it necessarily depends on the cause, so it cannot be said to be non-existent either. For this very reason, cause, effect, and memory can all be properly established — which is exactly why I say there is no fixed self-nature. Just as the grain, earlier and later, is neither one nor different, and is thereby able to perform all its various functions, so too memory: earlier and later moments of it are neither one nor different, and it is for this very reason that it is able to remember all its various objects.

If you ask: if memory is impermanent, how could it ever be cultivated through practice? Answer: it is precisely because it is impermanent that cultivation is possible at all. It is like planting the seed of the kapittha tree in the earth and watering it with the juice of the khadira tree: afterward, when the sprout, stem, branches, and leaves emerge, they show, in their own characteristic appearance, no different color at all — it is only when the fruit ripens that it takes on the khadira's own color, a deep red, quite different from the kapittha's own original coloring. Mind is exactly the same: wholesome and unwholesome deeds are performed, and each earlier moment of mind, in due sequence, perfumes the moment of mind that follows it — and it is precisely through this skillful means of perfuming, without any loss, that mind is neither simply one nor simply different across time. When the fruit finally ripens, its results of pleasure and pain, each in turn, become manifest — and it is thus that karmic actions arise from a mind that has no fixed self-nature, just as the kapittha seed eventually comes to share the khadira's own color. If, on the other hand, one insists that mind must possess a fixed self-nature, this is precisely what is meant by treating "memory" as requiring an unchanging substrate. Some further hold that the self, as an enduring experiencer, is likewise required by memory. But if one insists on this position, there could be no memory or self at all — for if mind possesses fixed self-nature, there could be no forgetting. If you say that forgetting does occur even so, two faults follow. First: if memory possesses fixed self-nature, there could be no forgetting; and if forgetting occurs, there could be no fixed-nature memory in the first place. As for this "forgetting" itself — does it possess fixed self-nature, or not? If it possesses self-nature, is it in contradiction with the nature of memory, or not? If not in contradiction, then within a single thing, remembering and forgetting, these two states of mind, would have to arise together at one and the same time. If they are in contradiction, then wherever the self-nature of forgetting is present, memory cannot be — but if memory is thereby altogether absent, what, then, is there left to be forgotten at all? If you say that this cognition simply arises and then later ceases, and it is this that is called "forgetting," then, on this account, your posited self-nature of mind cannot be established after all. If memory truly existed with a fixed self-nature, then the instrument that produces it would serve no purpose, since memory would already exist permanently on its own. If you say it is by means of this instrument that memory is thereby produced, then mind has no fixed self-nature after all, since this incurs exactly the fault we are pointing to. If the agent and its instrument were a single substance, there could be no memory at all, since cognition would then be permanently present with nothing left for the instrument to newly produce. If cognition simply did not exist at all at certain times, the mind would, at times, not exist, and so would have no fixed self-nature; and if the mind exists only at certain times, there could be no fixed-nature memory. And if there is no memory, then the mind would have to be understood as ceasing altogether at those other times.

If you say that mind can remain permanent precisely because it is a distinct substance apart from its momentary cognitions, then at the moment of direct perception itself, there could be no memory occurring; yet you would then have to say that direct perception itself simply stands in for the place of memory, so that the substance of memory is never lost — but this does not hold. Why? If a thing remains permanently unchanging, there can be no repeated practice at all — repeated practice is possible only where successive instances resemble one another as belonging to the same kind. Without fixed self-nature, this notion of "resemblance" can be sustained; but with fixed self-nature, each moment would have to permanently retain its own single, unchanging identity, and so there could be no resemblance between successive instances at all. Without resemblance, there can be no repeated practice; and without repeated practice, there can be no memory. If you insist on positing memory as fixed by self-nature, then inference and the other means of valid cognition built on it cannot be established either, since everything would collapse into a single undifferentiated substance — every doubting mind would have to already be a decided cognition, desire would have to be identical with freedom from desire, theft would have to be identical with giving, and one's own wife would have to be identical with one's own mother. If this primal cognition is not different from self-nature itself, does it exist before its object, or after it? If before, then, since the object cognized does not yet exist, what could this cognition possibly be cognizing? If after, then your own thesis that the effect already exists within the cause is undermined by its own logic. If you say it exists together with its object from the very beginning, what, then, is the object being cognized? If you say the object is the self itself — this does not hold, because the self cannot be established by either direct perception or inference. If a thing truly exists, it must be apprehended by one of these two means. Take, for instance, the five sense-objects apprehended by the five sense-faculties: since cognition of them does not need to be produced a second time, being already directly given, this is called direct perception. Inference, by contrast, is precisely where cognition must be produced a second time: one first sees smoke arise, and only afterward infers the presence of fire, because the inferred cognition is never separate from what actually grounds it — as one first sees smoke and only then knows there is fire. The self is not like this at all: it cannot be directly perceived, as color and the rest can, being entirely beyond the reach of the sense-faculties and their objects; nor can it be inferred, as the sense-faculties themselves can be, since there is no observable connected phenomenon corresponding to it at all. Therefore the self is not something that can be cognized in the first place. And so, if this primal cognition were said to precede its object, it could not properly be called a cognition at all. Hence we know that, in truth, no dharma whatsoever possesses self-nature — true emptiness alone is their real nature.