16.3 Of making Another Happy according to his Deserts

Controverted Point: That one can bestow happiness on others.

Theravādin: Your proposition implies that one can also cause misery in others. But you deny this, while you maintain the opposite with respect to happiness.

You imply further that you can hand over your own happiness to another; or others' happiness, or his own happiness, to another. You deny. To whom then? You imply, finally, that anyone causes another to act for him, that one's own welfare and ill are wrought by another, that one acts while another experiences.

Hetuvādin: But did not the venerable Udāyin say:

“Verily of many unhappinesses doth the Exalted One rid us, many happinesses doth he bestow upon us, of many bad things doth he rid us, many good things doth he bestow upon us”?

Hence one may hand on happiness to another.