Chapter 6: Examining Connection
All refutation and establishment depend on connection and contradiction, so both are settled before the definition of valid cognition itself. Dignāga and Dharmakīrti admit two connections, identity and causal production, and Sakya Paṇḍita’s argument is that neither is present in the nature of things: one entity cannot bear two phenomena, so there is nothing in the pillar for a connection to join. Connection is conception’s work, posited before the exclusion-cognition, which is exactly where the Earlier Epistemologists went wrong in placing it in the object.
Condensed from Khenpo Sodargye’s Chinese lecture transcripts on the Pramāṇayuktanidhi, and rendered into English. Root verses are given as the lectures give them; the prose beneath summarises the exposition. On the provenance and the limits of this rendering, see the series introduction.
Chapters: 1. Objects · 2. Cognition · 3. Universals and Particulars · 4. Proof and Exclusion · 5. Expressed and Expresser · 6. Connection · 7. Contradiction · 8. Definitions · 9. Perception · 10. Inference for Oneself · 11. Inference for Others
The Way Connection and Contradiction are Cognised
Two parts: (1) a general statement; (2) a specific explanation.
1. General Statement
All refutation and establishment Depend upon contradiction and connection; Therefore, before examining the definition of valid cognition, One should analyse contradiction and connection.
Refutation and establishment are the two moves of all reasoning: “there is no vase before me, because my eye-consciousness does not see one” refutes; “there is a tree before me, because I have seen the pine” establishes. Both rest on connection (相属, relation) and contradiction — connection establishes a phenomenon’s nature or properties, contradiction refutes by showing that the contradictory class has no place within its range. Because the whole of valid cognition presupposes these two, they are examined before the definition of pramāṇa itself.
2. Specific Explanation
Two parts: examining connection, and examining contradiction. [Chapter Six treats connection.]
a. Examining Connection
Three parts: (i) refuting connection in the object; (ii) establishing connection before the mind; (iii) setting forth the valid cognition that establishes connection.
i. Refuting Connection in the Object
Two parts: a general refutation and a specific refutation.
General Refutation
Two phenomena cannot be a single entity, And a single entity admits no connection either; Since each abides in its own nature, Real entities have no connection.
Connection here is to be read as relation. The claim of the chapter — startling on first hearing — is that no relation exists in the nature of things. Knowables divide into non-entities and real entities. Non-entities fall away at once: the barren woman’s son and the hare’s horns bear no relation to each other or to a pillar, and no one even thinks they do. Real entities are what we cling to, and they are either one or many. If many (a pillar and a vase, or the eight particles composing a pillar — earth, water, fire, wind, form, smell, taste, tangibility), each abides in its own place, unmingled, so no relation joins them. If one, relation is equally impossible: relation requires two relata, and nothing relates to itself.
The confusion arises from not separating the object’s own nature from conception’s clinging. Separate them, and both identity-connection and causal connection can be established from the side of conception. A vase’s impermanence and its being-produced are not two in nature, yet conception posits them as identity-connected — and may rightly say so. Tibetan grammar teaches many such relations (supported and support, as fish in water or birds in a tree; self and what belongs to self, as my hat or my yak; whole and parts, as tree and branches; one nature, as fire and heat; producer and produced, as mother and son, seed and sprout). All are conception’s work.
The point parallels the earlier treatment of exclusion. Some hold a thing carries self-characterised exclusion in its nature — the pillar having already excluded all non-pillars. If so, anyone looking at a pillar would know at once “this excludes everything other than pillar,” which does not happen. A thing’s nature exists; exclusion, and equally connection, are imputed onto it.
[Objection:] Certain fools claim that non-entities too Have a connection on the side of the similar class.
[Earlier Epistemologists — Chapa and others] Not only entities but non-entities are connected, on the side of the similar class. Their case: in the neither-one-nor-many reasoning (“all phenomena are non-existent ultimately, because free of being one or many”), the similar-class relation is “if non-existent, then free of one and many,” the dissimilar-class relation “if not free of one and many, then existent.” Since both “non-existent” and “free of one and many” are non-entities, the reason could not yield the conclusion unless non-entities were connected — otherwise the three modes collapse.
[Reply:] A non-entity has no nature; Were it to have a connection, it would become an entity.
A non-entity has no nature, hence nothing to relate with — like the barren woman’s son and the hare’s horns. And any connection must fall under one of the two Dignāga and Dharmakīrti admit. As identity-connection: with what nature is a non-entity identical? As causal connection: how could anything be produced within what has no nature? The barren woman’s son produces nothing. If a connection did obtain, the non-entity would already have become an entity.
Within conception, however, such talk is permissible. The Pramāṇaviniścaya holds that all connection is posited by the mind — so there is no reason to forbid it for non-entities: the barren woman’s son, the hare’s horns, and emptiness can be counted three identity-connected phenomena, all alike lacking nature. The Earlier Epistemologists’ error is that they placed the relation in the nature of things, not before conception.
Whatever does not forsake another phenomenon — That is the general definition of all connection. Since real entities do not intermingle, And since non-entities have no nature, in neither case is there [connection].
The general definition of connection: one phenomenon not forsaking another. So the world speaks — wife and husband do not forsake each other, hence a marital relation; fire and heat do not forsake each other, hence a relation. But neither entities nor non-entities can satisfy it. Entities do not intermingle: each self-characterised thing, down to a particle in the vase, abides in its own nature, so there is nothing to forsake or not forsake. Non-entities have no nature, so no question of forsaking arises. And there is no third category beyond entity and non-entity in which “not-forsaking” could reside.
To the objection that relations plainly break and hold — “he has forsaken her,” “he has not” — the reply is that all of this is mental positing. When two people are on good terms not a single particle of one merges into the other, and when the relation breaks neither departs from its own nature. Union of person with person exists; the relation is conception’s addition. This is the pivot of the chapter: real entities have no connection, non-entities have no connection, and there is nothing else for connection to belong to.
Specific Refutation
Three parts: (1) refuting identity-connection in the external object; (2) refuting causal connection in the external object; (3) refuting the remaining connections.
(1) Refuting that Identity-Connection is Established in the External Object
A single entity has no two phenomena; With no two phenomena there is no connection. Therefore the produced and the impermanent Have no connection in the external object.
One entity cannot bear two phenomena. The fire-particle in a pillar is one; being one, its nature admits no water- or wind-element portion. Without two phenomena there is nothing for connection to join — no more than “I am on good terms with myself” is a thing that can be said. So although we say “the pillar’s impermanence,” “the pillar’s being-produced,” both abide within the pillar’s single nature, and no identity-connection between them exists in fact.
[Objection:] If the isolates “produced” and “impermanent” Were not established in sound, Then the three modes could not hold; Hence the object possesses a connection of identity.
[Earlier Epistemologists] If identity-connection is absent from the nature of things, then the isolates “produced” and “impermanent” are not established in sound, and “sound is impermanent, because produced” fails — with it, every nature-reason argument Dignāga and Dharmakīrti use. That consequence is unacceptable; hence the object must carry identity-connection.
Their underlying error, stated here, is that the Earlier Epistemologists never separated object from cognition, sometimes pushing what belongs to cognition onto the object and sometimes borrowing the object’s features for exclusion.
[Reply:] Though the object is granted to be one substance, If the several isolates existed in the object, Then unrelated isolates would serve as no reason, While a connection would make them effect, or mere synonyms.
The shared ground is granted: the isolates “vase,” “produced,” “impermanent” are one substance. The dispute is whether the isolates themselves exist in the object, related to one another — the Earlier Epistemologists picturing them arrayed in the thing’s nature unmingled, like the gills of a mushroom. Two horns follow.
If isolate has no relation to isolate, no inference can pass between them — as East Mountain and West Mountain have no relation, so “there must be an East Mountain here, because West Mountain exists” proves nothing. (Also likened to the detached plates of ancient armour, never mingling.) Then “produced” could never establish “impermanent.”
If isolate is related to isolate, the relation must be identity or causal. As identity: pillar, produced and impermanent are one entity, so without conception’s contribution they are mere synonyms, and the argument degenerates into “the pillar is the pillar, because it is the pillar” — as the moon is called “cool-rayed” and “crystal orb.” As causal: one of pillar, produced, impermanent would have to be the effect of another, which the opponent will not accept.
The epistemologists escape both because they never place the relation in the thing. In nature “produced,” “impermanent” and “vase” are one entity; before conception they are drawn apart by exclusion (excluding non-produced yields “produced,” and so on), and only then can a reasoning be run for someone who knows “produced” but not yet “impermanent.” Though subject, thesis and reason have no distinct existence in fact, sentient beings do not realise the one as one, and for them the three-mode reasoning is necessary.
Hence Dharmakīrti’s final intent: in the nature of things identity exists, connection does not. Fire and its heat are genuinely inseparable and of one nature — that much is in the thing; the joining of the two is conception’s. A positing that accords closely with reality is still a positing, and is not thereby found in the object.
(2) Refuting that Causal Connection is Established in the External Object
Two parts: refuting the substantial connection of cause and effect, and refuting the connection of type. The first has three: refuting a sequential connection, an independent connection, and a connection of mutual dependence. The sequential has two: the before-and-after connection and the intermediate linking connection.
Before-and-after connection is untenable:
If they are not earlier-and-later, there is no causal connection; If they are earlier-and-later, one of them is absent. Therefore neither real entities nor non-entities Have a causal connection.
A dilemma. If cause and effect are simultaneous — seed and sprout at once, fire and smoke at once — there is no causality at all, since causality requires sequence. If sequential, then when the cause exists the effect does not, and when the effect exists the cause has ceased, so the two relata never coexist. The Sambandhaparīkṣā states that cause and effect cannot exist at one time; the Madhyamakāvatāra likewise denies that earlier-and-later cause and effect exist by their own nature. Relation needs three things: A, B, and what joins them. As with two living people, both must be there; if one has died there is no saying a relation holds.
Before conception, causal connection among entities (and even non-entities — one may ascertain that nothing exists in space) is fine. In the particular of things it never obtains.
An intermediate linking connection is untenable:
[Objection:] Suppose one claims that between cessation and arising There exists a connection that links them.
[Non-Buddhist] Between the cause’s cessation and the effect’s arising there must be a linking thing, like a river running between; otherwise smoke could not arise the moment fire ceases.
[Reply:] If that link is permanent it is not a real entity; If impermanent, it leads to an infinite regress.
If the link is permanent it is a non-entity, without nature and without function — as good as non-existent. If impermanent, it perishes in the instant it arises: existing with the cause in the first instant, it is gone by the second and never reaches the effect. Were it to persist to the second instant it would not be momentary, which no conditioned thing can avoid. And if a further link is inserted to bridge the gap, that link perishes likewise, requiring another, and so without end — the effect never reached.
The same is pressed by contact: does the link touch the cause? If not, it connects nothing. If it does, does it touch the effect? If not, again nothing; if so, its nature is not momentary. No bridge between the two shores can be found, no rope binding two yaks. The Sambandhaparīkṣā: if cause and effect are distinct entities, how could they be linked; if not distinct, how could they be cause and effect?
Mipham Rinpoche’s commentary marks the crucial distinction: “without the cause the effect does not arise” holds in the external object; the relation of “without which it does not arise” is posited by the mind.
Refuting an independent connection of cause and effect:
[Objection:] Without mutual dependence, Fire and smoke are [directly] connected.
[Non-Buddhist] No intermediary and no mutual dependence are needed; fire and smoke simply are cause and effect, as everyone sees.
[Reply:] If so, merely seeing one of them Should determine the connection of the two.
Then one who had never seen smoke would, on seeing fire, ascertain at once “this produces smoke”; and one who had never seen fire would, seeing smoke in the sky, know it came from fire. Neither happens: the causal relation is learned from a hearth-fire or a wildfire. Worse, the effect-reason “there is fire on the mountain, because there is smoke” would be pointless, and with it the whole science of reasons on both the affirmative and negative sides (“where the cause is absent, the effect is absent”).
Refuting a connection of mutual dependence — two parts: the connection of benefit, and the “without-which-not” connection.
Refuting the connection of benefit:
[Objection:] Cause and effect mutually depend through benefit; Hence connection is not contradicted.
[Non-Buddhist] Cause and effect are benefactor and benefited — as earth, water, fire and wind help produce the crop, so the cause benefits and the effect is benefited. From the side of conception this is admissible, and the Pramāṇavārttika says as much; asserted of the thing’s nature, it fails.
[Reply:] Since cause and effect stand as entity and non-entity, “Benefited” and “benefactor” can hardly hold.
Benefiting requires both parties present. But when the cause exists the effect is exactly like the barren woman’s son, and when the effect arises the cause has wholly ceased — cessation here meaning the instant-by-instant perishing of its nature, not ordinary death. One cannot help what has not arisen, nor be helped by what is gone.
What must be kept apart throughout is mind-phenomena and object-phenomena. Does the cause produce the effect? It does. Do cause and effect have a relation? From the thing’s nature none; from the side of conception, yes. Causal connection (tadutpatti) means precisely “that arising from that.” Fire and wood assemble and perish in one instant; smoke appears in the second — the work of their continuum, which we call relation but which is not one. From the thing’s side, smoke and fire have no relation, father and son none, seed and sprout none. Something does exist in the object — the existence of one leading to the arising of another — but not relation.
Refuting the “without-which-not” connection:
[Objection:] “Without which, [the other] does not arise” is the connection. [Reply:] Then left and right and the like would become connected.
If “without which it does not arise” just is causal connection, then left and right, long and short, large and small — every pair of mutually dependent phenomena, where one fails if the other fails — would become producer and produced. So the formula does not by itself amount to causality.
[Objection:] In the external object there is a connection of invariable concomitance. [Reply:] It is refuted by examining whether it is in terms of substance or isolate.
[Non-Buddhist] Even at logic’s ultimate there must be a “without-which-not” relation in the object, since without one thing the other cannot arise.
Examined by substance: when substantial fire exists, substantial smoke is as non-existent as the barren woman’s son; when substantial smoke exists, its fire has long ceased; simultaneous fire and smoke cannot be cause and effect; and present smoke arising within future fire is absurd. Examined by isolate: the isolate “fire” is a false conceptual appearance excluding non-fire, within which arises another excluding non-smoke — cognition’s work, not the object’s. The Earlier Epistemologists place isolates in actual fire and smoke; the epistemologists deny they are there at all.
Put concretely: in the mass of fire not a particle of smoke can be found, and in the mass of smoke not a particle of fire. When one is present the other is wholly absent, so there is nothing for either to be related to. Fire and smoke, seed and sprout, do have “without which it does not arise”; they have no “without-which-not” relation. Asked how two people’s relation stands, one may answer that relation is not established in the external object — or ask back whether the questioner means the relation in conception or in the object.
Refuting the connection of type:
[Objection:] Some say: particulars have no connection, But cause and effect have a connection of type.
[Non-Buddhist] Granting that particulars bear no connection, cause and effect are connected by type: a barley seed yields a barley sprout, humans produce humans, animals animals; the unbroken continuance of a race or a grain shows a type-continuum.
[Reply:] If “type” is of the nature of cause and effect, It does not escape the faults stated before;
If “type” falls under cause and effect, it is either substantial or isolate causation, both already refuted, and the same over-extensions return.
And if “type” exists apart from that, It was already conclusively refuted when [universals were refuted].
If “type” is instead a universal, chapter three settled it: universal and particular as distinct entities incur the faults pressed on the Vaiśeṣika; as one entity, those pressed on the Sāṃkhya. Applied here — is the universal in the sprout one with or distinct from the universal in the seed, and is it permanent or impermanent? If permanent it performs no function; if impermanent it is a real entity, and then it is simply the intermediate link already refuted, renamed “universal.”
(3) Refuting the Remaining Connections
By this, the connections of co-presence, conjunction, and aggregation, The distinguishing feature and that which it distinguishes, The agent, contact, and so forth — All such positions are refuted at once.
The proofs already used against identity-connection and causal connection dispose at a stroke of the remaining connections the non-Buddhists (and some Earlier Epistemologists) assert. The verses below treat each representatively; the Autocommentary refutes them at greater length, Jamyang Loter Wangpo’s commentary summarily.
[Objection:] Some say: a jujube stone resting in a copper bowl — That is the connection of co-presence.
[Non-Buddhist] Fruit and bowl are different substances, so not identity-connected; they exist at one time, so not causally connected; yet one rests in dependence on the other, so a third kind — co-presence — must join supported and support.
Reply: at one time there is no relation between them. But take the fruit in its second instant: its own prior nature is the substantial cause and the vessel the cooperative condition, keeping it from falling — and that is a producing-produced relation. So too a cup on a table: the table has no decisive action on the cup’s nature (hence is not the substantial cause) but acts on its distinguishing feature, not-falling. As beans arise from their own prior seed as substantial cause with earth, water, fire and wind as cooperative conditions, and people accordingly say beans come from field and fertiliser. The case is subsumed under causal connection; a separate category is superfluous.
[Objection:] Some say: the impermanent depending on the permanent Is called the connection of conjunction.
[Non-Buddhist] An impermanent particular — a sandalwood tree, a golden vase — depends on a permanent universal “tree” or “vase”; the joining of permanent and impermanent is conjunction. (The universal goes under various names: universal, whole-possessor, collection.)
Reply: no permanent substantial thing exists, so nothing is there for the impermanent to depend on. Joining a wholly non-existent thing to an impermanent one is like marrying the barren woman’s son to a yak. The connection fails even conventionally, and so cannot be subsumed under either of the two.
[Objection:] Some say: the produced, the impermanent, and so on, Aggregated in a single object — the connection of aggregation.
[Non-Buddhist] Produced, impermanent and sound are three distinct phenomena gathered on one thing. The Autocommentary gives their simile: hump, horns and four hooves gathered on one animal, which people call an ox.
Reply: taken as really three, this was refuted under identity-connection — they cannot exist as three separate substances in the object; and not being separate, nothing can connect them, since one phenomenon cannot link to itself. In conception, vase, impermanence and produced are identity-connected, so the case needs no separate heading.
[Objection:] Some say: knowing one thing by means of another Is the connection of the distinguishing feature.
[Non-Buddhist] One knows the staff-holder by the staff — arriving at a house and seeing a staff at the door, one infers a guest; seeing a car outside, one infers its owner within.
Reply: simultaneous staff and staff-holder bear no relation. But if the first-instant staff produces in the second instant the concept “staff-holder,” that is a producing-produced relation — by way of cooperative condition, not substantial cause, since the staff acts on the person’s distinguishing feature. Subsumed under causal connection; no separate category.
[Objection:] Some say: the ceased cause and the present effect — This is called the connection of linkage.
Already refuted: permanent, it cannot link; impermanent, it regresses without end. Not admissible even conventionally.
[Objection:] Some say: the self and its activity Possess the connection of the agent.
[Sāṃkhya, who hold the self sentient; Vaiśeṣika, who hold it insentient] The permanent self (ātman/puruṣa) and its activity — stretching and drawing in the limbs — stand in an agent-relation.
Reply: a permanent self is not established even by conventional valid cognition, so nothing here needs subsuming under the two connections.
[Objection:] Some say: the eye seeing form Is the connection of contact.
[Non-Buddhist] Eye-faculty and external form meet in contact.
Reply: if the claim is that eye-consciousness arises with the eye-faculty as dominant condition and form as object-condition, that is causal connection. Contact of faculty and form at one time is impossible however examined.
[Objection:] Master and servant, spouses, and the like Are all connections — so say the fools.
[Non-Buddhist] King and minister, husband and wife, cuckoo and swallow, swan and duck stand in relations of mastery and marriage.
Reply: they are not one entity, so not identity-connected; and at one time, persons bear no relation. Across time, a servant who feeds and tends the king acts on the king’s distinguishing feature — the king, well cared for, grows stout — and so a cooperative-condition-and-effect relation holds, as with a wife caring for her husband’s health. All of it falls under causal connection. Beyond that, the feelings people take to bind them do not exist in the object, and the treatises say so plainly: the Pramāṇaviniścaya, that in the external object connection certainly does not exist and all connection is posited by the mind; the Pramāṇasamuccaya autocommentary, that it was composed to sever clinging to the principles the non-Buddhists accept.
[Reply:] To assert connection in the external object Is refuted by examining sameness and difference.
One proof sweeps them all. If a self-characterised relation exists in the object, its relata are one or many. If many, each abides in its own nature without a particle’s mingling. If one, it relates to itself, which not even the world admits.
[Objection:] If you say the connections of co-presence and the rest Are understood as linked through exclusion —
The opponent shifts: we do not place these relations in things either; they work as your exclusion does, partly from the object and partly from conception.
[Reply:] The connections of co-presence and the like are invalidated [by reasoning]; Where there is no invalidation, they are subsumed within the two.
Some of these connections carry the invalidation of reasoning — conjunction of permanent and impermanent, the agent-relation of self and activity, the linkage between cause and effect — and hold neither in fact nor in convention; what reasoning invalidates cannot be established however great one’s power, just as calling fire cool is invalidated by worldly convention. Those that carry no invalidation the Buddhists may accept, but they fall under the two connections and need no multiplication. The Earlier Epistemologists are singled out for holding certain relations (notably the distinguishing feature and the thing distinguished) not subsumed under the two.
Interstitial verse:
What Dharmakīrti discarded, The foolish take up as their many bad notions. The vomit thrown up by one who has taken an emetic — Who but a dog would eat it?
Dharmakīrti’s seven treatises showed at length that no connection exists in any external thing. Some Tibetan masters of the Earlier Epistemologists nonetheless take up what he long ago refuted and adorn themselves with it — like a starving dog eating what a man has vomited after an emetic. The chief target is a minority of Buddhists rather than the non-Buddhists, whose holding such views would be no surprise. Sharp language in refutation is defended as necessary and precedented: Khedrup Je (“the cataract of ignorance has covered the eye of wisdom”), and Longchenpa in the Seven Treasuries.
ii. Establishing Connection before the Mind
Two parts: how the mind links, and removing disputes about this.
How the Mind Links
Taking the object as its basis before the conceptual mind, By worldly convention dividing and combining, Conceptually splicing the earlier and the later, And establishing the cognised object — this is fit to be connection.
What is denied in the object is affirmed before conception. Take the pillar, its impermanence and its being-produced: by excluding non-beam-supporting, non-momentary and non-produced, conception establishes three, which it may hold apart or gather upon one pillar. Both moves are sound because they accord with reality and are acceptable to ordinary people — unlike combining and separating a yak, a goat and a dog, or a pillar, a vase and a camera. That is identity-connection.
Causal connection likewise. Smoke has fire before it and the substance of “without which it does not arise” holds in the object; the relation is spliced by conception. This is not arbitrary — it is not like saying a vase comes from a pillar — but neither can it be placed in the thing’s nature. Only with it can the two inferences run: “there is fire on this mountain, because there is smoke,” obtaining the particular fire as cognised object; “this pillar is impermanent, because produced.” Without conception, no inference moves and no worldly communication, judgment or argument proceeds.
Removing Disputes about This
Two parts: the dispute about linking identity-connection, and about linking causal connection.
(1) Removing the Dispute about Linking Identity-Connection
[Objection:] “Produced” and “impermanent” are linked by the mind: If that link is established in the object, it is a connection in the object; If those are not established in the object, Then a non-object cannot serve as proof — so argues the other party.
A dilemma. If the mind’s link between produced and impermanent has any purchase in the object — if produced and impermanent are truly one there — then connection in the object is established after all. If they have not a sesame-seed’s worth of relation upon the pillar, then deriving the pillar’s impermanence from “produced” is as empty as “the pillar is the barren woman’s son, because it is tortoise-hair.”
[Reply:] Nominal positing too is of two kinds — Concordant with the facts and discordant. The concordant obtains the cognised object and is fit to be a connection; The other is not.
Connection is indeed nominal positing, but positing divides. Concordant: the pillar is genuinely momentary and genuinely produced, and the two are inseparable in its nature, so positing their identity-connection accords with the object even though the relation is not in the object. Discordant: that the pillar is permanent and unproduced, or is the barren woman’s son — untenable even conventionally. Identity-connection is the first kind, which is why the name is added to it and not to a combination of hare’s horns and a pillar.
The two differ by result. The concordant obtains the cognised object: saying “the pillar is impermanent, the pillar is produced,” one truly reaches the pillar’s impermanent produced nature. The discordant obtains nothing — no pillar is reached through the barren woman’s son.
A qualification: produced and impermanent are one in the object, but not as isolates; and as they appear in the mind they are distinct, but not substantially. The Earlier Epistemologists’ oneness is a oneness of isolate-phenomena, and isolates cannot exist distinctly in the thing’s nature. From the side of substance they are inseparable; divisibility is the mark of exclusion, and holds only before conception. Chapters three to six alike — universal and particular, expressed and expresser, exclusion, connection — cannot leave conception behind.
(2) Removing the Dispute about Linking Causal Connection
[Objection:] As for the invariable concomitance of smoke: If that relation is absent, smoke would be causeless; If it is present, then A connection of real entities is established.
The parallel dilemma. Deny the “without-which-not” relation between fire and smoke and smoke becomes causeless, arising anywhere at any time as the Cārvākas hold. Affirm it and connection stands in the object.
[Reply:] Granted, external smoke, Had there been no fire, would not arise; Yet the grasping that splices the earlier and the later Is nothing but conception — without conceptual thought there is no linking.
The fact is granted: without fire, no smoke. What is denied is that this fact constitutes a relation in the object. The splicing of earlier and later is conception’s; without it, “without which it does not arise” holds but “without-which-not relation” does not. Nor is this the Madhyamaka move — no claim is made here that cause and effect do not exist or that all is empty; only that the relation between them is not in the thing.
Pressed further: since the cause is an entity when the effect is a non-entity, mutual support fails, and with it the true benefactor-benefited of cause and effect. The Pramāṇavārttika’s definitions (benefactor = cause, benefited = effect) hold when joined with conception; without it, the effect still arises when conditions assemble, but no benefiting passes between them. Illustrated by generations: we cannot help the generation not yet born, and the generation that produced us had ceased before we appeared.
Nor is the conceptual positing groundless in the way “pillar and vase” would be. In the object the effect does arise in dependence on the cause. Calling that a relation is speech and thought. So too the Sautrāntika account of eye-consciousness arising from object-condition, dominant condition and immediately-preceding condition: called cause and effect and connection in convention, and by worldly tradition not counted an error, though the relation is unfindable in the nature.
iii. The Valid Cognition that Establishes Connection
Three parts: establishing the definition, identifying the illustration, and the way these are ascertained.
Establishing the Definition
Two parts: establishing identity-connection and establishing causal connection. The first has two: proving the conventional connection and proving the connection of meaning.
Proving the conventional connection:
Proof of convention is knowing, through complete three-mode reasoning, that definition and definiendum stand as proof and proven — the convention being established under conceptual clinging. Were the convention not established, the reason would not be a true reason.
The connection of definition and definiendum, And the connection of universal and particular, Are established only by mistakenly positing them as one entity — Not otherwise.
Both connections are established by proof of convention, and both rest on a mistake — taking the thing’s particular and its universal as one entity. “Humped and dewlapped” is the definition of ox; seeing such an animal, one says “this is an ox.” When the name was first given, the giver pointed at an animal with hump and dewlap; thereafter everyone conflates particular and universal in the same way. Likewise “knowing speech and meaning” became the definition of “human” after people had already been so called.
The relation is not in the object: the definiendum “ox” has no particular of its own, being a conceptual imputation, so joining it to the definition is formally like joining the barren woman’s son to a pillar. Yet the reasoning is not therefore false — by habit and tradition, “humped and dewlapped” does yield “ox.” Universal and particular work the same way: the universal possesses one isolate (vase, tree), the particular two (golden vase, cypress), and “the red pillar before me is a pillar” is known by convention. The red pillar exists; “pillar” as universal is a non-entity, so the relation holds only before conception, though it accords with reality.
Proving the connection of meaning — two parts: applying the reason, and removing the charge of indefiniteness.
Applying the reason:
Whatever exists, that perishes, as with a vase; Sound too exists — this is the nature-reason.
Vase, impermanence and existence are known to be one entity by inference — true inference, using one of the three reasons (effect, nature, non-observation). Here the order is unusual, the subject coming last: sound is the subject, perishing (impermanence) the thesis, existence the reason, the vase the simile.
The reason is a nature-reason, whose reason and thesis are identity-connected. Nature-reasons divide in two. The dependent nature-reason: “the pillar is impermanent, because produced” — “produced” implies a separate agent, a carpenter or a potter. The pure nature-reason: “sound is impermanent, because it exists” — existence has no separate “existence-maker” apart from sound itself.
“Existence” translates bhāva, which Mipham Rinpoche analyses as bearing four senses — real thing, real phenomenon, substance, existence; the argument could equally run “because it is a real entity.” Whatever exists is necessarily impermanent and whatever is impermanent necessarily exists; conversely, what is not impermanent does not exist. Applied to persons: “this companion is certainly impermanent, because he exists” — which overturns the clinging to permanence more directly than any scriptural statement.
Jamyang Loter Wangpo’s commentary explains why “existence” rather than “produced” is chosen: the non-Buddhists deny that their self and Maheśvara are produced, holding them naturally existent, so an argument from “produced” leaves them an exemption. They cannot deny that these exist — and existing, they must be impermanent.
The autocommentary also records the Earlier Epistemologists’ claim that non-entities exist as non-entities. Sakya Paṇḍita rebuts: a real entity exists by perishing instant by instant and acting through its particular; in what mode does a non-entity exist? No reason can be given, and the claim only defiles Dharmakīrti’s intent. (Some Later Epistemologists dispute the point too; Sakya Paṇḍita is said to have been questioned about this very reasoning by logicians met on the road to China.)
Removing the charge of indefiniteness — three parts: the reason of non-dependence; the invalidating reason; and the purpose of the two.
The reason of non-dependence — two parts: the actual reason, and removing disputes.
The actual reason of non-dependence:
Whatever has arisen is bound to perish, Requiring no other cause of cessation.
The argument: whatever exists is bound to perish, because it needs no other cause of cessation. Were another cause needed, a thing might never meet it, or might persist until it did, or persist forever. But nothing is so. The simile: an arrow shot into the sky falls of itself — the force of bow and archer having sent it up, nothing further is required to bring it down. So every phenomenon, once arisen, is momentary by nature and perishes by nature, needing no destroyer.
Removing disputes — three parts: the reason unestablished, the reason indefinite, and the over-extension charges.
Removing the fault that the reason is unestablished:
[Objection:] Since cessation depends on another cause, Your “non-dependence” is not established.
[Opponent] Some things do perish of themselves — clouds, lightning, waterfalls. But a tree is burnt by fire, a vase shattered by a hammer, a yak killed by a butcher: such things arise, abide, and perish only on meeting their destroyer. (The same instinct shows in the ordinary thought “I crossed this river last year and will cross it next year,” clinging to a similar continuum as one thing.)
[Reply:] The thing to be destroyed — a real entity — And cessation as a non-entity: these two Both involve the name and meaning of “cessation,” Yet neither requires a cause.
“Cessation” is used in two senses: the entity about to be destroyed (the vase, the tree, the yak still standing), and the cessation already accomplished (the shattered vase, the dead yak, the ash). Both carry the word and the notion of cessation, and neither requires a cause.
If the vase’s cessation is a non-entity, it depends on no cause; If it is a real entity established of itself, what cause does it need? Were it produced by another cause, the vase would never perish — Therefore it is established that cessation is causeless.
Two prongs. If the vase’s cessation is a non-entity, no cause can produce it — a non-entity is like the barren woman’s son or tortoise-hair, and if conditions could produce one, the barren woman’s son would appear when conditions assembled. If it is a real entity, it is either the vase’s own nature or something distinct. If the vase’s own nature, cessation is established the moment the vase is, and no hammer is needed. If distinct, then though that distinct thing perishes the vase’s own nature never does, and the vase becomes permanent — a consequence the opponent cannot accept.
The Pramāṇavārttika runs the same analysis with tree and fire: is the tree’s cessation one with the tree or distinct? And is the tree’s nature impermanent or permanent — if impermanent it perishes of itself, if permanent no hammer can destroy it.
The autocommentary records a counter-simile: as one lamp both burns the wick and dispels darkness, so one hammer both destroys the vase and produces shards. Reply: the lamp acts on two phenomena and from the side of isolates may produce two cessations, but “destroying the vase” amounts only to the non-existence of the former whole — and that whole was never established to begin with. On the opponent’s account the potter would count as a destroyer of clay rather than a maker of pots. The real distinction is between substantial cause and cooperative condition: the substantial cause of the vase’s destruction is its own instant-by-instant perishing; the hammer, as cooperative condition, only alters the coarse shape before us. The same holds of fire burning wood, or the butcher killing the yak.
[Objection:] Cessation, though a non-entity, is produced by a cause. [Reply:] If so, non-dependence is established of itself.
If the opponent grants that the vase’s cessation is a non-entity produced by conditions, the reason of non-dependence is established indirectly.
A non-entity made by a cause, And a cause that has made nothing at all — These two are identical in meaning, Like “seeing the void” and “seeing nothing.”
“Conditions produced a non-entity” and “conditions produced nothing” say the same thing — as “I see space” and “I see nothing” say the same, seeing nothing being just what seeing space amounts to; or “I visualised nothing” and “I attended to nothing.”
Removing the fault that the reason is indefinite:
[Objection:] When the assembly is complete, yet as with a sprout [nothing arises at once], Your “non-dependence” is not certain. [Reply:] All such assemblies undergo change [and] depend on time; Therefore the reason is not uncertain.
[Opponent] Seed, earth, water, fire and wind may all be assembled and still no sprout comes up — so something further is depended on, and non-dependence does not hold universally.
Reply: what the assembled conditions still await is time, and the assembly itself changes throughout. That a spring-sown seed does not sprout in the second instant is granted; the example therefore fails to overturn non-dependence.
[Objection:] The produced too depends on time.
[Opponent] Then let the vase await time likewise: made in the factory with a hundred-day span, it does not perish before the hundredth day, just as the seed does not sprout before spring. So some things perish only when their time comes.
[Reply:] If, depending on time, the produced changes, Then its destruction is already non-dependent; If it does not change, it remains undamaged as before.
The question to put back: from the day of making to the hundredth day, does the vase’s own nature change? If it changes, destruction is already proceeding without any external cause, which is the thesis. If it does not, grave consequences follow. The first day’s vase can abide ninety-nine days; the ninety-ninth day’s vase, being indistinct from it, can abide another ninety-nine — so the hundred-day span becomes two ninety-nines, and the regress continues, making the vase permanent. Or conversely: since the first day’s vase and the ninety-ninth day’s are indistinct, the last day’s vase should perish on the first day, in this very instant. Reckon by days, hours or instants alike, and the thing comes out either forever permanent or unable to abide at all.
The Buddha’s statement in the sūtras follows: “phenomena arise from conditions, phenomena cease from conditions”; “all formations are impermanent, of the nature of arising and perishing.” Arising is perishing, with no abiding phase; only the defilement of a similar continuum hides it. Chapter two noted the same flaw in direct perception: ordinary beings cannot see even a year’s change in a face, and sometimes judge a person to have grown younger over a decade — an impossibility, like a river flowing back.
[Objection:] The assembly is an unchanging single entity; Therefore this reason is not established. [Reply:] If the assembly were one with the later sprouting, Then, being one entity, the sprout should arise at the very beginning.
If field, seed and the rest are complete in the first instant and unchanging until the effect appears, then the sprout should come up at the moment of sowing: seed and elements assembled in March should sprout in March, not a month later. The analogy: if a foetus did not change over nine months, the woman would bear the nine-month child on the day of conception.
[Objection:] Though it is one entity, there is an obstacle; Therefore the sprout’s arising [at the start] is not certain.
[Opponent] The March seed and the June seed are one unchanged seed; it did not sprout at once because an obstacle was present then and absent later. (Ask a farmer whether the seed sown and the seed sprouting are one, and he will say they are.)
[Reply:] Since “with obstacle” and “without obstacle” are different entities, Though you assert one entity, it has already become two.
To speak of an obstacle present and then absent is already to admit two natures, which cannot be one; and if they are one, the March seed should sprout in March. The same reasoning applies to persons — the lay “me” of before and the renounced “me” of now are strictly not one, or else one would become the other. This disposes indirectly of the whole notion that a thing persists intact until its destroyer arrives.
[Objection:] When the causes of barley assemble, The arising does not depend on producing a rice-sprout; Yet since no rice-sprout comes forth, This reason is not certain.
[Opponent] An argument from the side of the name. If perishing needs no other cause, arising should need none either. And non-dependence does hold in one respect — barley’s seed, water, field and fertiliser produce barley without depending on rice — but fails in another, since barley cannot produce a rice-sprout at all; so the reason is not uniform.
[Reply:] Since the rice-sprout depends on its own seed, Your charge that the non-dependence reason fails does not hold.
Barley does not produce a rice-sprout because the rice-sprout depends on its own seed, not because non-dependence has broken down. Arising and perishing need not run parallel; the opponent argues from the name rather than the meaning.
[Objection:] The produced and the existent do not perish momentarily; They depend on a cause of destruction.
[Opponent] Seizing on the admission just made — the rice-sprout depends on its own seed — the opponent presses: if arising depends, perishing depends too, on a destroyer.
[Reply:] A sprout depends on its own cause; But the perishing of a real entity does not depend on another cause, And cessation as a non-entity needs no cause — Therefore no other cause of cessation is required.
That a sprout requires its own substantial cause is fully accepted: without its prior seed, no assembly of cooperative conditions will produce it. Cessation is a different case, and the earlier dilemma governs. As a real entity’s cessation: no entity in the world, once arisen, persists without perishing, so in the second instant its particular perishes with no cause required. As a non-entity’s cessation: a non-entity can be acted on by nothing, its nature never having arisen, so there is nothing for a destroyer to reach.
A note on divergent accounts of cessation. Tsongkhapa’s Clarification of the Intent lists among its eight difficult points the acceptance of cessation as a real entity, based on the Prasannapadā’s statement that cessation arises in dependence on a cause and that from cessation its effect arises. Many masters, including Jamyang Khyentse, read “cessation” there as dependent arising — as when a person dies and the former continuum transfers to another, the process being called the arising of cessation — and so it is not the target of the entity/non-entity analysis here. The Pramāṇayuktanidhi autocommentary, citing the Pramāṇavārttika, holds cessation to be nothing more than the prior instant’s now being non-existent; apart from the word, no particular of cessation is found in the object.
Removing the over-extension charges:
[Objection:] (1) It would become a direct contradiction within one substance; (2) Anything other than that is untenable; (3) Obstructive and non-obstructive phenomena are on a par. [Reply:] These three over-extensions do not refute our position.
[Vaiśeṣika, the Esoteric school, and other non-Buddhists] Three consequences, all answered.
First: if the vase’s cessation is a non-entity, and non-entities are permanent, then permanent and impermanent — directly contradictory — coexist in the one vase. Reply: only a real entity can carry the notion “permanent” in opposition. A non-entity’s nature is unestablished, so it is not permanent either; the Pramāṇavārttika asks, of a mere negation, “how is it permanent?” The barren woman’s son is not permanent, nor are the hare’s horns.
Second: if cessation is a real entity, it is one with the vase or distinct; one, and the vase (being cessation) never perishes; distinct, and again the vase’s own nature never becomes cessation. Reply: the one-or-distinct analysis applies to real entities, and cessation is not one; the dilemma has no purchase.
Third: as real entities divide into obstructive (vase, pillar) and non-obstructive (cognition), so the produced should divide into permanent and impermanent. Reply: whatever is produced is bound to perish, so no reason establishes a permanent produced thing. The two cases of obstructive and non-obstructive arise from different causes — cognition’s substantial cause is prior non-obstructive cognition, the vase’s prior conditions are potter and clay — whereas permanence has no such causal route. The opponent grabs at any resemblance for a simile; the same move would argue that since an eagle flies and is alive, humans, being alive, should fly. Chapter ten sets the requirement: a simile’s common point must be established by inference or direct perception, wholly present in the similar class and wholly absent from the dissimilar. Debating examples like “the yak should have no horns, since humans have none and both are alive” fail this test.
The invalidating reason — two parts: stating the opponent’s position, and refuting it. (Also called the reason of harm: the claim that one’s assertion incurs invalidation by scripture, reasoning, or an objective cause that thwarts it.)
Stating the opponent’s position:
[Objection:] Just as there can be a white crow, A permanent real entity is not contradictory.
[Maheśvara school] Crows are generally black, yet rare white ones are found. So although most real entities are impermanent — granted — special cases such as Maheśvara or God may be permanent without contradiction, since the world everywhere distinguishes the general from the exceptional.
Refuting that position — two parts: showing it untenable under analysis, and establishing by means of a reason.
Showing it untenable under analysis:
[Reply:] If the permanent performs no function, Then being a non-entity, our positions in fact agree; If it can act and so changes, it forfeits permanence; If it does not change, it contradicts being an agent.
(The school’s claims resemble present-day positions holding that God created the environment first and then beings, chiefly for humans, with cattle and sheep created for their sustenance.)
A trilemma. Does Maheśvara perform a function? If not, it is a non-entity and the dispute is merely verbal — the opponent calls it Maheśvara, the Buddhist calls it a non-entity, and nothing is at issue. If it does act, does its nature change in acting? If it changes, permanence is forfeited. If it does not change, it cannot create the world of beings and environment — or else it creates everything at once, past, present and future appearing together, as the Bodhicaryāvatāra’s wisdom chapter argues, which contradicts every direct perception.
Establishing by means of a reason — two parts: applying the reason, and understanding its meaning.
Applying the reason:
Whatever does not act is a non-entity, like space; The permanent too, being changeless, does not act.
In the standard form: the permanent Maheśvara you accept is a non-entity, because it lacks function, like space. Subject, thesis, reason “free of function,” simile space. The argument counts as an invalidating reason only if the three modes are complete.
Understanding the meaning of the argument — three parts: the meaning of the argument, the probandum, and the reason.
The meaning of the argument — its subject of dispute.
The subject is the exclusion “permanent.”
The subject is the permanent Maheśvara, which is not a particular but an exclusion — a notion of a permanent thing arising in the debaters’ minds, taken as though it were a particular. The science of reasons teaches six kinds of unestablished subject, among them “the barren woman’s son is impermanent, because non-existent,” where the subject fails. The difference is that an establishing argument cannot take a non-existent subject, whereas a refuting one may: “the permanent Maheśvara is not a real entity, because free of function” is negative throughout, so no fault of an unestablished subject arises. The Madhyamakālaṃkāra’s “all phenomena accepted by self and others are without inherent nature, because free of one and many” works the same way, the non-Buddhists’ permanent self being included among the subjects precisely in order to be negated.
The probandum.
The negation of a real entity is the probandum.
The thesis here is a non-implicative negation — the non-entity that results from negating a real entity. A probandum may sometimes be positive (“the vase exists, because I see it”); here it is negative.
The reason — two parts: the property of the position, and establishing pervasion. The first has two: refuting others’ positions, and establishing our own.
Refuting establishment by direct perception:
[Objection:] The property of the position is established by direct perception.
[Ngok Lotsāwa and others among the Earlier Epistemologists] The negated functioning entity and the permanent unchanging thing are wholly contradictory; that contradiction first appears in the mind and is known by self-aware direct perception, and from that experience one judges upon the external argument that whatever is a non-entity is free of function. So the property of the position is known indirectly through self-awareness — hence “established by direct perception,” slightly different from the next view.
[Reply:] There is no need to first generate a cognition apprehending the object of negation.
The step is superfluous. To establish “the barren woman’s son does not exist before us,” one need not first have the barren woman’s son established in cognition and then negate him; it suffices that the valid cognition “he does not exist” arises. Likewise it suffices that the permanent is free of function; what the negated functioning entity is like need not be set up in self-awareness beforehand.
Refuting establishment by self-awareness alone:
[Objection:] Some say it is experienced by conception alone.
[Chapa and others among the Earlier Epistemologists] The permanent, changeless, function-less property of the position is apprehended by one’s own conception — known by self-awareness, since the permanent can never function and each of us has the self-aware portion.
[Reply:] [Then] no wrong conception could ever occur.
If self-awareness established this by itself, no non-Buddhist founder or master — all of whom have minds, and therefore self-awareness — could ever have generated the wrong conception “this is permanent and the maker of all things.” Nor could anyone hold that karma and rebirth do not exist. Wrong views plainly do arise, so the property of the position is not established this way; it must come through inference.
Establishing our own position:
Therefore, being empty of momentariness, The reason that refutes the performance of function is established.
Take Maheśvara as subject: it cannot perform a function, because it is non-momentary — like space. Whatever is momentary is not permanent, and whatever is momentary functions; holding Maheśvara permanent, the opponent has already excluded function, which contradicts the claim that it creates the world.
[Objection:] Though its nature is permanent, its phases change, So it can perform a function.
[Maheśvara school] The nature stays permanent while the phases or stages change, so function and permanence are compatible.
[Reply:] If the two are one, the two phenomena contradict; If they are different entities, [the permanent] contradicts being an agent.
Are nature and phases one or distinct? If one, a single indistinct entity would have to be permanent and impermanent, functioning and non-functioning, at once. If distinct, then whatever acts is not Maheśvara — as a person makes a vase while the sky, being permanent, has nothing to do with it. Then which of the two is Maheśvara? If the impermanent one, permanence is abandoned; if the permanent one, creation is abandoned.
The Buddhist parallel is distinguished: buddha-nature is called permanent while each phase of appearance is impermanent, and Mipham Rinpoche addresses the apparent similarity in several treatises. The difference is that the Buddhist “permanent nature” is never a real existent — examined by ultimate valid cognition it is wholly emptiness, illusory and dreamlike, a permanence transcending conception — whereas the non-Buddhists’ permanent is a real thing. (Treated in the Madhyamakāvatāra autocommentary citing the Laṅkāvatāra, in the Jonang Mountain Dharma, and in Mipham Rinpoche’s Lion’s Roar Affirming Buddha-Nature.)
[Objection:] Though there is no momentary perishing, There is coarse change.
[Opponent] A person from one to fifty shows no momentary change, only a coarse change at the end; so there is no subtle impermanence, and a thing persists until its continuum breaks.
[Reply:] If it does not perish at the initial instant, How could coarse change occur?
Coarse change presupposes subtle change. If a person’s continuum is unchanged from one to fifty-nine and changes only in the last instant, then, being indistinct from the one-year-old who could live fifty-nine years, the fifty-nine-year-old can live another fifty-nine. And if there is no ageing in a day, there is none in thirty days, hence none in twelve months, hence no year-by-year ageing — yet ageing by years is what the opponent asserts.
The purpose of these two reasons:
To call the non-dependence reason a mere preliminary To the invalidating reason is not [Dharmakīrti’s] true intent.
[Some masters] The non-dependence reason serves as the premise establishing that impermanence is non-dependent perishing, upon which the invalidating reason is then applied — one preliminary, one main practice.
Rather, to counteract two wrong notions, These two reasons were taught.
They answer two different wrong-viewers, not one graded path. The first holds that phenomena, even if impermanent, do not perish in a given phase but only at the end through a destroyer — met by the reason of non-dependence. The second holds that most things are impermanent but rare exceptions (the white crow; the permanent self, the divine self, Maheśvara) are not — met by the invalidating reason.
Establishing Causal Connection
Three parts: refuting others’ positions, establishing our own, and removing disputes.
Refuting Others’ Positions
[Objection:] Cause and effect are determined through five stages. [Reply:] This is untenable, for it over-extends.
[Opponent] The causal relation is ascertained by five successive observations: (1) in a clean place neither fire nor smoke is seen — established by the valid cognition of non-observation of the perceptible, so the range must be one where a fire would be visible; (2) fire is seen; (3) smoke rises from it; (4) the fire ceases; (5) the smoke ceases with it. Presence-following and absence-following across five layers determine cause and effect.
Reply (from the autocommentary): the scheme over-extends to pairs that are not causally related at all. Before sunrise there is neither sunlight nor drum-sound; the sun rises and light floods the earth; after a while households begin to chant and drums sound; the sun sets and the light goes; darkness falls and the drums stop. Five layers of presence- and absence-following, and no causality whatever. Moreover the five are superfluous: three layers on the similar side or three on the dissimilar side suffice, and if three cannot settle the matter, five cannot either.
Establishing Our Own Position
Two parts: the definition of cause and effect, and their ascertainment by valid cognition.
Definition
Cause and effect are benefactor and benefited; The cause divides into the substantial cause and the cooperative cause.
The cause is defined as what benefits another phenomenon, the effect as what is benefited — but only before exclusion-cognition, never as a real transaction between barley seed and barley sprout. “Acting” means no more than that when conditions assemble the effect arises naturally. Strictly, the cause cannot act on the effect: while the cause still holds its functioning nature, the effect is exactly like the barren woman’s son, not yet come into the world, and no power can act on what is not there. The objection that without such action an effect could arise from anything — a vase from a pillar, an elephant from a yak — does not follow. Why barley seed yields barley is dependent arising, which the more it is examined the less it is found, in logic’s conventional examination as in Madhyamaka’s.
The classification divides the cause, not the effect. The substantial cause acts on the effect’s own nature — the Abhidharmakośa’s homogeneous cause, one’s own prior continuum producing the later: barley seed to barley sprout, apple seed to apple, prior cognition to later cognition. The cooperative cause (= cooperative condition) acts on the distinguishing feature only: earth, water, fire and wind aid the seed; soaking a seed in milk makes the fruit sweet and fragrant without touching its nature. The Pramāṇavārttika, chapter two: mind’s substantial cause is its own prior homogeneous mind, its cooperative causes the contributory conditions — karma, which inclines this life’s mind to suffering or happiness; brave parents, whose bravery works on the child’s mind as cooperative condition. The Abhidharmakośa’s co-existent cause (mutually dependent simultaneous phenomena, like long and short) differs somewhat: the Reasoning-Following Sautrāntika treat it not as true causality but as mutual positing.
Ascertainment
They are [determined by] positive and negative concomitance — These two, each in three stages.
Three stages of presence-following: (1) direct perception, backed by the non-observation of the perceptible, that the place has neither fire nor smoke; (2) fire is seen; (3) smoke arises from that fire. Three stages of absence-following: (1) smoke is directly seen arising from fire; (2) the fire ceases; (3) the smoke ceases with it. Either triad suffices; neither more nor fewer stages are needed.
The first stage matters as much as the rest. Without first establishing that neither is present, the effect might have been there already or might have come from elsewhere. Mipham Rinpoche’s great commentary answers the obvious counter-example: in a clean place there is first neither yak nor horse, then a horse appears, then a yak — are they cause and effect? No, because the yak ran in from elsewhere. With fire and smoke, the smoke did not come from the stove or the house but arose in that fire, and this is directly seen.
The Cārvāka claim that mind arises from body fails exactly here. They cannot observe the intermediate state in which body and mind are both absent, and they cannot directly see mind arise from a body once present; they observe only that mind changes when the body acts, and infer from that. The requirement is twofold — that the effect was not present before the cause, and that it did not come from elsewhere.
The three stages combine direct perception and conception: the eye passes three times, and exclusion-cognition then joins them — “these two are cause and effect; smoke arises from fire, not fire from smoke.”
Removing Disputes
[Objection:] The fault that the definition is unestablished, The over-extension, and the mistaking of something else — [Reply:] These do no harm here.
[Opponent, first] Some causes and effects lack observable concomitance. A person becomes possessed and falls ill: the effect is visible, the cause is not. One recites the Vajrasattva mantra to purify misdeeds: the cause is visible, the sign of purification is not. So the definition is unestablished, through an invisible cause in one case and an invisible effect in the other.
Reply: the account takes visible cause and effect, like fire and smoke, as its representative case. It was never claimed that every causal relation must be settled by these two triads, nor that all cause and effect must be visible to an ordinary person — the Buddhas and bodhisattvas see these directly.
[Opponent, second] Sandalwood, cypress and poplar all burn; the smoke from sandalwood is not called “sandalwood-smoke” but simply smoke. So a particular cause would produce a universal effect, and the causal relation falls into chaos, since general smoke covers pine and aloeswood too.
Reply: the relation holds between sandalwood-fire and sandalwood-smoke. Sandalwood-fire producing general smoke is no causal relation at all, since the universal — whether the non-Buddhists’ or the Earlier Epistemologists’ — was shown in chapter three to be a non-entity, and no non-entity enters a causal relation.
[Opponent, third] Smoke’s substantial cause is not necessarily fire: in some valleys smoke rises from anthills. So inferring fire from smoke fails.
Whatever is produced from a non-cause Is not the effect of that cause; Because their appearance is similar, people misunderstand And merely apply that thing’s name to it.
The grey stuff rising from an anthill in spring or summer is not smoke — perhaps mist. Only what arises from fire is smoke; similar colour and rising motion do not make it so, and the name is merely transferred on the strength of the resemblance. Other cases of the same mistake: a mirage taken for water, a rainbow for silk, a beautiful woman for a goddess.
[Opponent, from another angle] If what comes from a non-cause is not the effect, and fire’s cause is wood, then fire struck from flint and stone should not be fire.
Stone, wood, and the like are not the cause of fire; Fire’s cause is fundamentally the fire-particles. The gathering of those particles into one is the cause; Stone, wood, and the rest are like the [sense-]faculties.
Fire’s substantial cause is the fire-particle, present in every thing composed of the great elements — the Abhidharmakośa’s eight particles are in wood and in stone alike, kindling merely having more. Wood, iron and stone are cooperative causes that gather the fire-particles; they are not the substantial cause. (Asaṅga’s commentary on the Uttaratantra says fire’s substantial cause is firewood, intending that wood contains the fire-particle component. Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika differ on particles: the former hold self-characterised four-element particles, the latter treat the four elements as four special capacities which are the particles themselves. The Mahāyāna Abhidharma speaks of latencies ripening — the wind-latency when a tree sways, the water-element latency when a seed is moistened.)
A substantial cause need not resemble its effect in colour or shape: a grey seed yields a green sprout and a yellow fruit. What defines it is being the direct cause within one continuum — the homogeneous cause.
Or else cause and effect, earlier and later, Exist as mutually distinct entities — Just as the smoke produced from fire Differs from the smoke produced from smoke.
The second case. Fire’s first instant arises from wood or kindling, its later instants from the fire-particles; smoke’s first instant arises in the fire, its later continuum from smoke. So a thing may depend at its outset on something apparently unlike it and thereafter on its own kind. From the side of the continuum this is still homogeneous causation, though cause and effect need not match in properties or function.
Does this concede the Cārvāka case — the first instant of mind arising in the body, as the first instant of smoke arises in fire? Never. A simile must have a common point established by valid cognition or accepted by the opponent. Fire arising in kindling and smoke in fire are directly seen through the three stages; that mind arises in body is seen by no one. We observe only that embodied persons have minds — not that in the womb or the intermediate state a body was there first and mind then arose from it.
Mipham Rinpoche’s account: the five faculties of this life are the substantial cause of the next life’s five faculties (in the intermediate state, form subsists as latency). Mind’s substantial cause is mind, body’s is body. Born in the formless realm, the mind that craved form acts only as a cooperative cause while the present faculties become the substantial cause of that realm’s faculties, present as dormant latency; without craving for form, only a single mental consciousness remains, as in deep sleep, and when the latency of form ripens the body appears again, like the dream-body arising in sleep. The Wish-Fulfilling Treasury likewise holds the formless realm not wholly without form, but with subtle meditative form or form absent only in its coarse desire-realm mode.
On “all phenomena are mind-made”: does mind then produce mountains, pillars and other insentient things, an unlike effect from an unlike cause? The claim determines the Cittamātra view, where these are the mind’s illusory display, and the dream-simile carries it — in a dream, confused cognition produces mountains, rivers, houses and pillars appearing as outer. From the side of confusion, insentient things are produced in the mind; examined strictly there is nothing apart from mind and its confused appearance, so the fault of dissimilar producing dissimilar does not arise.
Identifying the Illustration
The particular alone, and the universal alone, Are not tenable as the illustration of connection; Rather, it is solely the exclusion In which the universal is mistaken for the particular.
Neither relatum alone can illustrate connection. The particular alone cannot, since fire and smoke bear no relation in their particulars. The universal alone cannot, since the universal is no different from the barren woman’s son and performs no function. The illustration is exclusion — specifically the mistaking of universal and particular as one entity. In the process by which the mind’s universal and the external fire and smoke are taken as one, the “without-which-not” is posited as a relation, and that exclusion is the illustration of connection.
The Way these are Ascertained
Two parts: refuting other schools’ one-sided claims, and our own complete answer.
Others’ One-Sided Ascertainment
The Kashmiri master [Nengle-Huanxi] says Connection is determined by investigative cognition; The masters of Nyiwön assert That connection is determined by valid [direct] cognition.
[The great Kashmiri paṇḍita] The provisional connection is determined by valid cognition, but the true self-characterised connection by investigative cognition — which the Autocommentary identifies as a subsequent cognition, since one observes the three layers and only afterwards makes the determination.
[The paṇḍitas of Nyiwön, in eastern India] An investigative or subsequent cognition does not see the reality; the three layers, in either direction, are seen by direct perception, so direct valid cognition determines the connection.
Our Own All-Encompassing Position
Produced by the force of valid cognition, Possessing the ascertaining quality of exclusion, Mistakenly investigating [universal and particular] as one real entity — By this the connection is determined.
Both are required. First, the three-layered force of direct perception is indispensable — presence-following or absence-following, seen directly. Second, an exclusion-cognition, which takes the particular and the universal as one in its mistaken mode. The “without-which-not” is directly seen; conception then operates and determines that fire and smoke stand in a causal relation.
Neither alone will do. If direct perception could see the relation itself, connection would exist in the particular of things — the very fault the chapter refutes. If conception alone determined it, error could not be excluded, since conception guesses. Nor is this inference: inference requires a subject, a thesis and a reason, and the “without-which-not” of fire and smoke sets up no specific subject.
Concluding Verse
In the real external object there is no connection; Both kinds of connection are superimpositions. Mistaking the universal for the particular, The notion of connection arises.
Neither causal connection nor identity-connection exists in the object: no relation between fire and smoke, none between the impermanence and the being-produced of a pillar. Both are posited by conception, and the positing must accord with reality. But accordance does not make it real. All conception is mistaken in nature, and however closely it fits, it retains a bias against the particular and is never real as the directly seen is real. Its mode of operation is to mistake the universal for the particular — taking the universal “without-which-not” for a relation resident in fire and smoke, or the universal identity-connection for an inseparable bond in the vase. From this the two notions of connection arise. The verse summarises the whole chapter.
End of the Sixth Chapter of the Pramāṇayuktanidhi, Examining Connection.
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