Now, to explain how from among cause and effect there is no time when there is reliance on a cause, it was said:
If separate things are made by a productive cause,
Do they exist or not? Both? Neither of these two?
Why need producing if they do? What’s done if not?
What’s done if both? What’s done if neither of the two? (6.21)
A producing cause is not the producer of an existent product, because of the faults that have already been explained in such statements as, ‘That the produced is produced once more is senseless;’ there would not then be the slightest purpose to it having conditions. When the produced does not exist, what would the producers do? It is just as non-existent as the horns of a donkey. As stated:
For you who assert the existence of results,
And you who assert their non-existence,1
There would be no point in embellishing
Your house with pillars and such.2
And from the Middle Way Treatise:
If a result has an intrinsic essence,
How can a cause produce it?
If a result does not have an intrinsic essence,
How can a cause produce it?
If there is no production,
Causation becomes unfeasible.
If causation is unfeasible,
What becomes of the result?3
Title
Chapter 1: Pramuditā
