PAUL SCHWEIZER MOMENTARY CONSCIOUSNESS AND BUDDHIST EPISTEMOLOGY 1. INTRODUCTION One of the basic tenets of Buddhist philosophy is the doctrine of momentariness (ksanikavdda), the view that the world is not materially preserved from one moment to the next, but rather consists of a series of discrete 'instants' (ks.an. as) of existence, followed by complete annihilation before the next instant begins. This startling and powerful critique of the apparent stability and continuity of material objects serves as the basis for a number of important ancillary positions, including those concerned with the 'naturelessness' of all phenomena and the intrinsic negative aspect of being. The merely apparent continuity and temporal duration of objects is explained by appeal to the principle of dependent origination (pratityasarnutpdda), whereby it is held that there is a relation of strict causal dependence between the moments of existence, even though there is not an underlying material cause which is preserved in the effect. The principle of dependent origination explains the perceived fact that the world evolves accord- ing to an orderly and coherent pattern, rather than as a series of arbitrary and chaotic transitions from one moment to another. Depen- dent origination thus countermands the logical possibility that anything can arise from anything else, and it is this constraining principle of dependency which accounts for the appearance of continuity over the discrete instants of existence. In the present paper, I wish to put forward the argument that the doctrine of momentariness, when applied to consciousness, serves directb7 to undermine the epistemological basis for the principle of dependent origination. This is not intended as an interpretive or exegetical claim, but rather as a philosophical response to one of the main theoretical features of a fairly general Buddhist position. The philosophical claim I wish to make is that if consciousness is held to be truly momentary, then this aspect of perceptual awareness and Journal of Indian Philosophy 22:81--91, 1994. 9 1994 KluwerAcadernic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.