Note (return) — SA@NKARA'S INTRODUCTION (continued 4)

If you maintain that the so-called internal cognition (âlayavijñâna410) assumed by you may constitute the abode of the mental impressions, we deny that, because that cognition also being admittedly momentary, and hence non-permanent, cannot be the abode of impressions any more than the quasi-external cognitions (pravrittivijñâna). For unless there exists one continuous principle equally connected with the past, the present, and the future411, or an absolutely unchangeable (Self) which cognises everything, we are unable to account for remembrance, recognition, and so on, which are subject to mental impressions dependent on place, time, and cause. If, on the other hand, you declare your âlayavijñâna to be something permanent, you thereby abandon your tenet of the âlayavijñâna as well as everything else being momentary.—Or (to explain the Sûtra in a different way) as the tenet of general momentariness is characteristic of the systems of the idealistic as well as the realistic Bauddhas, we may bring forward against the doctrines of the former all those arguments dependent on the principle of general momentariness which we have above urged against the latter.