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The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c10.s2.t4: 4. Why the Body, in spite of Liberation, still continues to exist

The System of the Vedânta according to Bâdarâyana's Brahma-Sûtras and Çankara's Commentary c10.s2.t4

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4. Why the Body, in spite of Liberation, still continues to exist

c10.s2.t4.1

Sûtras 4, 1, 15. 19.

c10.s2.t4.2

Knowledge burns up works, but only works whose retribution has not yet begun, whether they originate from this life as led before the awakening (*prabodha*), or consist in a balance from some previous life which could not come to realisation in the present existence (above pp. 112. 390). But knowledge does not destroy those works whose seed has already germinated, that is, those from which the present life, serving as basis for dawning knowledge, has been fashioned (p. 1080, 9; the same predestination of the course of life as we find in Plato's Republic 10, 15, p. 617 E). For if this were not so, if all works without exception were annihilated by knowledge, then quiescence (*kshema*) would not arise only after death, but immediately upon the attainment of knowledge, since there would be no further cause for the continuance of life [no further work to be atoned for] (p. 1080, 12). For this fact certainly startling in our system, that in spite of liberation the body still continues to exist for a while, Çañkara gives two explanations, of which the one is more realistic, the other more idealistic. (1) As the vessel which is being formed requires the potter's wheel to support it, so liberation requires a life as a substratum; and as the potter's wheel continues for a time to revolve, even after the vessel has been completed, so also life continues after liberation, since it contains no cause to check the impetus already gained (p. 1081, 2); hence only after works, like the velocity of the flying arrow, have expended themselves, does liberation become an accomplished fact for all who possess knowledge; therefore it is said (Chând. 6, 14, 2; translated above p. 266): "To this [worldly action] I shall belong only until I am liberated, then shall I go home" (p. 916, 8). (2) As when a man suffering from eye disease, continues to see two moons even after he has attained the conviction that there is only one moon there, owing to the force of the impression (saṃskâra-vaçât), so too the impression of the sense-world persists, after a man has attained the knowledge of its non-existence (p. 1081, 5).—In view of the questionable character of these explanations, our author falls back upon the inner certainty of liberation: "Here, he remarks, no discussion at all is admissible; for how could anyone who is convinced in his heart that he is Brahman, be refuted by another, even when he is in the body?"

c10.s2.t4.3

Truly there are venerable, holy words, which prove how profoundly the Indian was convinced of what he lays before us!—But the condition here described (to which, as the highest goal of existence, humanity will ever return, whatever else man may undertake)—this condition must have been nothing very rare in India, as is proved by the fact that later ages had a technical expression for it, namely jīvan-mukti (liberation during life) and jīvan-mukta (the living liberated), although we do not yet meet with these expressions in Çañkara.

c10.s2.t4.4

Thus after works, whose retribution has not yet begun, have been destroyed by knowledge, while those whose seed had already germinated, have been consumed through continuance of life, death comes, as the outward sign of this consumption (above p. 353), and with death comes definitive and eternal union with Brahman; for the works on whose account one had to live are exhausted, while the balance, and in them the seed of a further existence, has been burnt up, through the destruction of false knowledge, on which they depend, by perfect knowledge (p. 1086).

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