It might be interjected, ‘Though the yogi does not perceive a chariot, there is a perception of the mere collection of its parts.’1
To explain: It is quite comical for someone to be scouring for yarn amongst the ashes of burnt wool.
The chariot has no existence, and without
An owner of the parts, its parts cannot exist.
‘If the chariot is disassembled, wouldn’t one still perceive a pile consisting of its wheels and so forth? How can you then claim that, “…without an owner of the parts, its parts cannot exist”?’
That is not so. It is only when the perceiver’s understanding is related to a chariot that the wheels and other such parts will be thought of as a chariot, and not when the cognition is different, in which case the wheels and so forth may themselves be understood as possessors of parts on the basis of their own constituents. When wheels and so forth have no relationship at all to a chariot, they will not be thought of as parts of a chariot.
This point may further be understood through the following example:
Like parts that vanish when a chariot is burnt,
Are parts whose owner has been scorched by reason’s flames. (6.161)
For example, when the part-possessing chariot is burnt, its parts too are certainly consumed. In a similar way, when the rubbing of the sticks of analysis produces the fire of reason which consumes things into imperceptibility, and the chariot is thus burnt to the point of intangibility, since the parts too become fuel for the fires of reason and will certainly be burnt, they do not retain their identity.
Title
Chapter 1: Pramuditā
