Dear Avijit:

After reading mathematical point instant (ksanika) philosophy one more time, I feel more confident than ever that ksanika philosophy can explain quantum mechanics better than existing quantum theories. Ksanika philosophy can also explain why the light behaves differently (as particles, as simple harmonic waves, electromagnetic waves, and as quanta). I am giving some thought to this and I will discuss this in my future e-mails.

I read in every modern physics text book that photons travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per hour). This is absurd as per Ksanika philosphy. Ksanika philosophy believes in point instants of reality, and to say that the same photon is traveling at 186,000 mph is completely no no. In the words of Dignaga, a 4th century Buddhist logician, this construction (of stability and continuity) is produced by productive imagination, it is not a source of cognition. It is recognition, not cognition.

In my previous e-mail, I stated that electrons do not spin. Electrons, like light photons, consist of point-instants, and at every moment a new point instant is created. But since this creation and dissolution is occurring extremely fast, our senses view this motion as continuous motion.

Now we know that when energy of gamma radiations exceeds 1.02 million electron volts (MeV), these gamma rays split into electrons and positrons. Now if electrons do not spin and consist of point instants, why photons will not consist of point instant? That is where lies the contradiction in modern quantum mechanics. How can a photon who is stable suddenly transform into a different reality where at each stage a new energy compact is generated in an electron?

In my future e-mails I will also provide arguments presented by ksanika Buddhists against the presence of ether. Mind you, Avijit, Buddhists had thrown out the presence of ether during 6th or 7th century AD, but western scientists threw out the concept of ether only after 1850. In that respect Buddhists were at least 1200 years ahead of western scientists.

In my future e-mails I will present Buddhist arguments against the presence of space and time which are independent of point instants of reality. It is only around 1900 western scientists were able to talk about relative time and relative space. In that respect Buddhists were ahead of modern scientists by almost 1100 years.

From my point of view the discovery of point instant of reality in India was as important as the discovery of zero by Indians, and we must give credit to Buddhists for both. The concept of Sunyata by Nagarjuna during 2nd century AD somehow stimulated the discovery of zero.

The Buddhist philosophy of ksanikas is extremely precise. There was no room for probability. Chrakas believed in probability hypothesis (sambhavata) and Ksanika Buddhists threw out their arguments about probability completely.

As explained earlier, ksanika philosphy started during 4th century AD (possibly by Vasubandhu), and during 8th century AD, professors Santiraksita and Kamalsila of Nalanda University gave it a final form. Here are their ideas:

During 4^th century A.D. Vasubandhu, a great Buddhist scholar wrote:

Motion consists of a series of immobilities (meaning the motion is discontinuous). The light of a lamp is a common metaphor designation for an uninterrupted production of a series of flashing flames. When this production changes its place, we say that the light has moved, but in reality other flames have appeared in other contiguous places.

So during 4^th century A.D. instantaneous events were called instantaneous flashes of energies.

During 8^th century A.D., series of flashing flames were replaced by mathematical point instants. In differential calculus, we say that Dx/Dt = dx/dt when Dt tends to zero. That is exactly what we Buddhists called these mathematical point instants.

Professor Santirakshita, who was head of Nalanda University around 760 AD, wrote:

The momentary thing represents its own annihilation. The moments are necessarily discrete, every moment, i.e. every momentary thing is annihilated as soon as it appears, because it does not survive the next moment. If something of the preceding moment would survive in the next moment, this would mean eternity, because it would survive in the third and following moments just in the same way as it survived in the second moment

In the words of Professor Kamalsila (around 775 AD):

The events are instantaneous and succeed without intervals or with infinitesimal intervals. Not the slightest bit of what was found in the former moment is to be found in the next moment, the change must be instantaneous.

The sensible world consists of sensibilia that are but momentary flashes of energy. The perdurable, pervasive matter that is imagined as their support or substratum is the fiction of the Sankhyas and other schools. All things without exception are nothing but strings of momentary events. This character of being instantaneous, of being split into discrete moments pervades everything. By proving this fundamental thesis alone of ours, we could have repudiated at one stroke the God, the eternal matter (of the Sankhyas) and all the wealth of metaphysical entities imagined by our opponents. To imagine them one by one, and to compose elaborate refutations at great length was a perfectly useless trouble, since the same could have been done quite easily. Indeed no one of our opponent will admit that these entities are instantaneous, that they disappear as soon as they appear, that their essence is to disappear without leaving any trace behind.

Professor Kamalsila further proceeds to repudiate God and matter (nature and soul of different schools) and half permanent personality of Vatsiputriya Buddhists. After that Professor Kamalsila analyses entities such as Universals, Substance, Quality, Motion, and Inherence of the Sankhyas, Matter as admitted by the materialists, and the eternal scriptures (such as Vedas) claimed by the Brahmins.  In conclusion, not only God and permanent matter are denied, but also any stability constructed by our imagination is thrown out. Professor Kamalsila concludes that ultimate reality is kinetic and instantaneous.

Vir Gupta