Passage 7

Not only is cancelling not established from self-awareness; it is not established even from inference, because the subject is not established, and, by the word “even”, because the reason and the pervasion are not. “Even” is to be carried to both places. Here, when the subject is established, the work of inference is to cut off the non-connection of the property to be proved, by an established reason whose pervasion is remembered. And here, with the earlier knowing of silver as the subject, not being a pramāṇa is the property to be proved. There, either the knowing of mother-of-pearl, or the knowing “not silver”, or the content’s being such as to be made the content of that knowing, would be made the reason. And this is not right, since at that time the subject, the earlier awareness of silver, is not there. Nor are the knowing of mother-of-pearl and the rest properties of it; and what is to be proved is not established from what is not a property of the subject. So this too is unsound: that the subject could be that knowing as it is remembered. But suppose what is proved is that the mother-of-pearl is not the content of the knowing of silver, because it is the content of the knowing of mother-of-pearl. Then, if this is meant of now, it proves what is already established; and if of before, then what it sets out to prove is cancelled by that earlier self-awareness. And by what has the pervasion been grasped, that “where there is now one act of knowing, another was not there before”? If it is said, “by another inference”, there is infinite regress. This also answers the question “How could there be two acts of knowing about one content?” For who could know that those two acts of knowing have one content? It has been said that they rest, to begin with, in themselves and in their own contents. So there is no cancelling through inference either. Nor, in this experience, is anything of that kind felt standing between, since it shines at once, being established by self-awareness. For this very reason this too cannot be said: “let there be no such thing as cancelling”.

Having shown in this way that the other side’s position cannot be accounted for, he brings to its conclusion, for his own position, what was promised in the words “the relation of what is cancelled and what cancels would arise from their coming to rest in one pramātṛ”: it is right if it is born of one pramātṛ. For it has already been explained that he alone makes it so. And this being settled, if, to establish the dealing, the argument that it cannot be accounted for otherwise is put forward as well, let it be put forward by all means: now everything is established.

Not only do these dealings, cause and effect, remembering and cancelling, which are the dealings common to the whole course of the world’s life, stand on one pramātṛ. Even the particular dealings, buying and selling and the like, which are touched by mala, and the relation of teaching and taught and the like, which are free of mala, they too rest on one pramātṛ alone. For all dealings have connection for their life. This he shows by way of a summing up:

So, in the all-pervading one, inlaid with the appearances of objects utterly divided, dealings are experienced, whether touched by mala or free of it.