A History of Indian Philosophy v2.c19.s6.20

v2.c19.s6.20

Prabhākara seems to hold a similar view. Thus Śālikanātha, in explaining the Prabhākara view in his *Prakaraṇa-pañcikā*, says that emancipation means the absolute and ultimate destruction of the body, due to the total exhaustion of merit and demerit². The difficulty is raised that it is not possible to exhaust by enjoyment or suffering the fruits of all the *karmas* accumulated since beginningless time; he who, being averse to worldly sorrows and all pleasures which are mixed with traces of sorrow, works for emancipation, desists from committing the actions prohibited by Vedic injunctions, which produce sins, exhausts by enjoyment and suffering the good and bad fruits of previous actions, attains true knowledge, and is equipped with the moral qualities of passionless tranquillity, self-restraint and absolute sex-control, exhausts in the end all the potencies of his *karmas* (*niḥśeṣa-karmāśaya*) and attains emancipation³. This view, however, no doubt has reference to a very advanced state in this life, when no further *karma* is accumulating; but it does not call this state *mokṣa* during life; for *mokṣa*, according to this view, is absolute and ultimate non-production of body.