Passage 11

But surely, if the ordering of difference and non-difference among things comes from the force of vimarśa alone, then talk of error in the three worlds is now at an end: even in mother-of-pearl it comes out as true silver, since it is held in awareness as “this is silver”. And so, with no error, cancelling would not hold; so why was it said, “the measuring, uncancelled, of a real thing”? For if nothing ever strays, the qualifier “uncancelled” finds nothing to exclude. This doubt he sets aside:

Even where there is a single vimarśa of silver, silver does not stand in mother-of-pearl, because the place that is its limiting adjunct does not agree. In the double moon too, the sky is otherwise.

In “this is silver”, stable, common to all pramātṛs, fit for effective action, there is to begin with no falsity at all, by the force of ābhāsa and vimarśa, in the part “this”, in the parts “silver” and the rest, or in the part that is their coming together. But there will be a later vimarśa: “this is not silver, a real thing, stable, open to other pramātṛs, doing the work one wants”. The form that this vimarśa holds in awareness is the one that properly belonged to the time of the earlier vimarśa; yet at that time of the earlier vimarśa it is not held in awareness at all, though it ought to have been held in awareness. For the later parāmarśa is “at that very time this was not silver”, not the vimarśa “only now is this not”, as with lightning that has flashed and died away. So it does not shine forth, up to the point of vimarśa, with the full form with which it ought to shine forth. So the truth of error is simply a not shining forth, whose form is an incomplete shining forth. On its account let them also speak of the shining forth of the unreal, of the reversed, of the inexpressible and the like.

But surely the knowing of true silver too is an incomplete shining forth. What follows from that, then? This: it would follow that everything is error. Happily, the long-lived gentleman’s eyes are about to open! For the whole domain of māyā is error. But even within it, this is called a further error, like a dream within a dream, like a boil upon a boil, because the vimarśa, though fit to go on, does not hold firm. And so, in the ābhāsas of this-ness and the rest, taken apart, there is no error of any kind; but in the part that is their joining, what cancels uproots the going on of vimarśa, starting from the very time the vimarśa arose. So error lies there alone: this is established. Though silver and mother-of-pearl share one vimarśa, still the standing that the knowing of silver gave silver in mother-of-pearl, as “this is silver”, does not hold, because the place that is its limiting adjunct does not agree: the place of the mother-of-pearl, which colours itself with the look of silver, “silver is here”. Agreement is a making shine that keeps the right vimarśa going; the root “vad” here concerns shining. It is from the absence of that, as the cause.