When intention is destroyed, how could there be destruction of the world without it?

Vasiṣṭha’s rhetorical question inverts the logic of attachment. Ordinarily, we fear the destruction of the world—loss, death, change—as something external that affects us. Vasiṣṭha reveals that the world we fear losing is already saṅkalpa, already our own intentional construction. Therefore, its destruction happens continuously: each moment that our intention changes, the world it sustained changes. There is no stable world that is later destroyed: it is perpetual destruction and reconstruction, just as a film projects distinct frames that create the illusion of continuous movement.

The kṣaya—the destruction—of saṅkalpa is not negative but liberating: when compulsive intention ceases, the world ceases to be a threat because it ceases to be “my” world. The jagat continues, but as jagat—cosmic appearance—not as a field of personal desires and fears. The Aṣṭāvakra Gītā (III.13) formulates it thus: ātmānaṃ viddhi paraṃ mā pramādiṣṭa-bandhanam—“Know the supreme Self, not the source of error and bondage.” The pramādiṣṭa-bandhana—bondage through error—is precisely the saṅkalpa that takes the world as truly external and clings to it or rejects it. When this error dissolves into stillness, the destruction of the world no longer frightens, because there never was a world separate from the one who perceived it.