Passage 2

For when a pot is seen, in the very place of the pot a not-pot too is supposed possible, something of the nature of cloth and the like: apt to step into a place taken to be a fitting spot, able to give rise to knowing, and brought there by its own causes. So, since an appearance of the two, pot and not-pot, can be supposed, superimposition has room. And when the not-pot is superimposed, there is the work of exclusion, marked by negation. Quickened by that, the determination “pot” has the form of vikalpa. The optative is in the sense of possibility. But as for this that is called prakāśa: whatever is supposed in its place is not, to begin with, other than prakāśa in form, for one supposes only what is of equal rank. And what prakāśa has to do has never once been seen done by what is not prakāśa. And by the very force of supposing it, superimposing it and the rest, its being other than prakāśa would fall apart. So there is no appearing at all of something else equal to prakāśa: not prakāśa in form, distinct, of the same rank, and unable to bear the work of dividing that is exclusion. And when there is no such thing, what is there to exclude? Even if it could appear, it would be prakāśa in form. Nor does prakāśa differ in form, place or time, so that a second prakāśa could be excluded from the one. “Hi” means: since this is so, there is no pair; with no pair, exclusion cannot happen; with no exclusion, there is no form of vikalpa; and so in cit alone, whose self is parāmarśa, the awareness “I” is pratyavamarśa only, not vikalpa.

But surely, when a pot whose form is fully settled has been seen, how is the not-pot negated by a vikalpa that lives on that seeing? For no one has taken hold of even the name of the not-pot. And how on earth is a vāsanā of the not-pot to awaken when a pot is seen? True. That question should be put to the Buddhist, not to us, since:

For this vikalpa, “pot”, is said to be the determining of “that” through the excluding of “not-that”, by the pramātṛ himself, who partakes of the appearing of “that” and of “not-that”.

Here the pramātṛ has been shown to be something beyond the pramāṇa, free in his acts of knowing, and the doer, since he brings about joining, separating and the rest. And it has also been said that within this pramātṛ is the appearance of every object, both with cit alone for its body and as resting on one ground with him, after the manner of a city in a mirror. So the pramātṛ partakes of the appearing of “that”, the ābhāsa of the pot, and of the appearing of “not-that”, the ābhāsa of the not-pot: that is, he first attends to them. In the state free of vikalpa, that pot, whose own nature is cit, is full, with the universe for its body, just as cit is; and there are no dealings with it. So, setting the work of māyā in motion, he breaks up the thing, full though it is. By this, the not-pot, his own self and cloth and the rest, is excluded, in an exclusion that takes the form of negation. Resting on just that exclusion, the determining of that pot is spoken of: “It is just a pot.” For the sense of “eva” is the negation of some other real thing that is supposed possible. This alone is “pariccheda”, from cutting all round, as in hewing. “Hi” means: since this is so. Therefore it is right that vikalpa draws in a pair. By the two things stated in the previous verse, the two reasons were given in order: since vikalpa is like this, the pure vimarśa “I” is not vikalpa. This is the sense of the one great sentence that runs through the three verses. The Buddhists too, when they say here “the one who knows” and “by himself”, have spoken of this single work, called pratyavamarśa, as belonging to the pramātṛ alone; but how they could make it good, let that rest.

But surely, on this account, even in the pratyavamarśa “I”, the pot and the rest, which are not of the form “I”, are a counterpart to be excluded; and when they are excluded, why would it not have the form of vikalpa? With this in mind he says: