But say we dispense with such analysis:
But let’s assume that self-awareness is affirmed.
That memory remembers it is still unsound,
Because it’s other, like an unknown in one’s mind.
This argument will conquer any counterclaim. (6.74)
If we do say that cognition is aware of itself and the object, it is still illogical for a remembering cognition to remember them, because the remembering cognition is accepted as other in relation to the cognition that experienced the object. The reflexive awareness and experience of the object that happened in Maitreya’s mind will not be remembered by Upagupta, because he didn’t experience them. Similarly, seeing as they are other, it would be just like an unknown mind appearing to oneself, and a subsequent consciousness taking place within a stream of mind cannot therefore have that memory, because it didn’t experience that cognition and object.
Now, one may think that such a memory can exist, since this is a case of a single continuum where things have a causal relationship. But this too is not the case because we have an argument which defeats any objection. The argument of stating, ‘Since they are other …,’ will utterly defeat any counterclaims such as, ‘They are part of the same continuum,’ or, ‘They are in a causal relationship,’ and so on. Since a moment of recollecting cognition would come about subsequent to the experience, it is something other; and being in that way just the same as having a cognition of another stream of mind, we may say that it isn’t of a single continuum as the cognition that experienced, or in a causal relationship, and so forth. So this argument of stating that they are other is a sweeping refutation.
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Chapter 1: Pramuditā
