0301 Verse 378

Original

प्रध्वंसस्य तु नैरात्म्यान्नास्त्यनन्तरभाविता ।
नाभूत्वाभावयोगस्य गगनेन्दीवरादिवत् ॥ ३७८ ॥

pradhvaṃsasya tu nairātmyānnāstyanantarabhāvitā |
nābhūtvābhāvayogasya gaganendīvarādivat || 378 ||

As regards ‘annihilation’, as it can have no essence (character), it cannot ‘come into existence immediately after the thing’;—and as regards the presence of the character of ‘coming into existence after having not existed before’, this is precisely like the ‘sky-lotus’ and other things.—(378)

Kamalaśīla

Such characters as ‘coming into existence immediately after theng,’ and the like can exist in things only, never in a non-entity, like the ‘Hare’s Horns’; and ‘Annihilation’ has no ‘essence’, no character;—how then can it have any such character as ‘coming immediately after theng’ and the like?

As regards the presence of the character of ‘coming into existence, having been not in existence before’; the particle ‘ca’ includes the character of being occasional.—(378)

“If that is so, if Annihilation has not the character of coming into existence immediately after the thing, then what can be the meaning of the assertion that ‘there is Annihilation of the thing’? When something does not belong to a thing, it can never be attributed to it.”

The answer to this is provided in the following—[see verse 379 next]