। ॥ §०§ , , । , , , , ॥८॥ ---- । । ॥ §१§ , , , , , , , ॥९॥ , । ॥ §२§
In plain words
Here, meaning to set out, since it has come up, the truth about how dealings with absence are established, he first finds fault with the very example as the other side’s system has it:
It is not so. From the knowing of a bare place there could be established its being not a pot; but not the absence here of a pot, even one fit to be perceived.
The example that was given does not itself hold. If it is asked why, it is answered: here absence is sometimes to be dealt with by identity, “the ground is not a pot”, and sometimes by separation, “here on the ground there is no pot”. Of these, the first dealing is established from the knowing of the bare ground, where being visible does not come into play. For a and the like do not even meet the conditions of being perceived, by force of their own nature; or, with sound and the like, the completeness of the whole set of causes that grasp it, the ear and the rest, is not ascertained there, since no other real thing sharing a single act of knowing with it is apprehended. Of such a thing too this absence is grasped by identity: “the ground is not a ”, “it is not a sound”. But where being visible is a qualifier that necessarily comes into play, there, when absence is to be dealt with by separation, this is not the means.
If it is asked why, we say: because it would reach too far. He shows just that:
The ground is always bare, since things rest in themselves; so how could the knowing of it, at some time, be what establishes the absence of something distinct?
Even when a pot is there, the ground is simply bare, for things do not blend together. So even then there is a knowing of bare ground; and so, even when there is a pot, how is it that absence is not dealt with by separation: “here on the ground there is no pot”? “The knowing of it”: the knowing of the bare patch of ground. “At some time”: in some one state only, the state in which the pot is not near. That it should establish the absence of the distinct pot then, and not always: in what way could that be? By this it must be understood to follow that one could also say “here on the ground there is no ”.
But surely the dealing that rests on absence by separation is beyond dispute in the world, and it is seen in some one state only. What way is there, then? With this doubt in view, he shows a way of establishing it that the ancients did not see:
But what then? A mass of light is there, or, for the blind, a soft touch, warm or the like; its own knowing can establish its being not a pot.