6.7 Of Space as visible (KV6.7)

Controverted Point: That space is visible.

Theravādin: If this is so, you commit yourself to saying that space is visible material, visible object and element, and therefore, as such, is either blue-green, yellow, red, or white, is cognizable by the eye, impinges on the eye or organ of vision, enters into the avenue of sight—which you deny … .

Substituting “space” for “visible object”, you must affirm or deny that “because of eye and space visual consciousness arises”. If not, your proposition falls through. If you agree, you cannot quote any Suttanta to establish this. All that the Suttanta says is:

“Because of eye and visible object visual consciousness arises”.

as you agree. Hence you must either call space visible object (with its properties), or fail to maintain your position.

Andhaka: If I am wrong, you must nevertheless admit that you “see” the interval between two trees or two posts, the space in a keyhole or in a window. Surely then space is visible.

The Points of Controversy, an English translation of the Pali Abhidhamma Kathāvatthu. Translated by Shwe Zan Aung and C.A.F. Rhys Davids. First published by Pali Text Society, 1915.

This SuttaCentral edition was prepared by Manfred Wierich and Ven. Vimala and proofread by Josephine Tobin. Some changes were introduced:

Abbreviations, i.e., those of cited works and the participants in the controversies, were expanded.

Cross-references were linked.

Some typographic changes were introduced, among others, i.e.: the phonetic symbol “ŋ” was changed to the Pāli diacritical letter “ṃ”, “ô” to “o”, single quotes to double quotes, and “:—” to “:”.

Letter-spacing with fixed spaces was replaced with bold font.

The corrigenda were merged into the text. Some could not be resolved, though.

This electronic version is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 licence (CC BY-NC 3.0) as found here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

All copyright is owned by the Pali Text Society. See also the statement under http://www.palitext.com/ → Publications → Copyright Announcement. For non-commercial use only.