Property:SanskritTranslation
From Bodhicitta
This is a property of type Text.
T
Ordinary people, through direct perception, observe all sorts of causes, since the distinct parts of a lotus, such as the stalk, result from distinct causes. +
If you ask what caused the variety of the causes, [the answer is:] it results from the variety in the preceding causes. If you ask how the cause results in its consequence, [the answer is:] they resulted through the power of the preceding causes. +
[Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika] God is the cause of the world. [Mādhyamika] Then explain what God is .. If he is 'the elements', so be it, but then why the fuss over a mere name? +
Moreover, the earth and other elements are not one, nor permanent. They are inert and not divine. One can walk on them. They are impure. That is not God. +
Space cannot be God, because it is inert. Nor is the Self, because its existence was disproved above. If creativity belongs to what is beyond conception, what can be said of the inconceivable? +
An Objector Interjects: A magically generated mind is an impossibility, for there are no magical techniques—formulae, etc.—that can effectively produce a mind. The Author Replies: The magical phenomena we speak of are of a variety of types, and they arise from a variety of causes and conditions. +
What does he want to create? If a Self, surely that is something eternal? God, consciousness resulting from a cognizable object, and the nature of earth and other elements, are without beginning. +
Suffering and happiness are the result of action. So say what he created. If you argue that the cause has no beginning, how could there be a beginning to its effect? +
How come he does not create continuously, if he is not dependent on anything else? There is nothing else whatsoever which was not made by him, so on what might he depend? +
If you argue that God is dependent on a combination of conditions, then again he is not the cause. He would have the power neither to refrain from creating if the combination of conditions were present, nor to create if they were absent. +
If you argue that God creates without desiring to create, it follows that he is subject to something other than himself. Even if he creates out of the desire to create, he is subject to desire. In what way does this creator have omnipotence? +
Those who claim that atoms are permanent have also been refuted above. Followers of Sal!lkhya maintain that primal matter is the permanent cause of the world: +
The constituents of nature, that is, goodness, passion, and darkness, present in equilibrium are called primal matter. The universe is explained by their disequilibrium. +
But it is not possible for a single thing to have three separate natures, so it does not exist. Likewise the constituents do not exist, since they too would each be made up of three constituents. +
Furthermore, in the absence of the constituents, the existence of sound and other sense objects is beyond possibility. Moreover, sensations such as pleasure are not possible in something which has no ·consciousness, such as cloth. +
If you argue that it is of the nature of existent entities to cause those sensations, surely existent entities have already been analysed away? Moreover, you hold that it is pleasure and the like which are the cause and not, therefore, cloth and other material objects. +
One single condition is not sufficient to effectively produce anything under any circumstance.<span class="smw-highlighter pagebreaks" data-type="8" data-state="inline" data-title="Page number from:" title="434" tabindex="0"><span class="smwtticon pagebreak note text-80">[p.434]</span><span class="smwttcontent"><big>[[How to Be a Bodhisattva: Introduction to the Practice of the Bodhisattva Path (The Bodhicaryāvatāra)]]</big> <br> <span class="muted">Gómez, Luis O., trans. "How to Be a Bodhisattva: Introduction to the Practice of the Bodhisattva Path (''The Bodhicaryāvatāra'')." In ''Norton Anthology of World Religions: Buddhism'', edited by Donald S. Lopez Jr., 395–441. New York: Norton, 2017.</span></span></span>
An Objector Interjects: If beings are already in the peace of nirvana, from the absolute point of view, and transmigrate from the point of view of conventional reality only, +
If sensations such as pleasure came from things such as cloth, in the absence of those things there would be no sensations such as pleasure. Furthermore, feelings such as pleasure are never seen to have any permanence. +
If the manifestation of pleasure really exists, why is the feeling not perceived? [Objection] That same sensation becomes subtle. [Mādhyamika] How can it be both gross and subtle? +
[Objection] Relinquishing the state of grossness it becomes subtle. It is the state of grossness or subtlety which is impermanent. [Mādhyamika] Why not accept the impermanence of everything, as of them? +
