The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c6.11

c6.11

The only conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence is that some of the conceptions of Buddhism are very closely allied to those of the Sāmkhya. The most important correspondence is that in the conception of the relation of ignorance and the Samskāras, the impressions thus left on the mind, which cause it in the view of the Sāmkhya to attain ever new births, until at last the true knowledge is reached, and there ceases to be the possibility of rebirth, as the source being cut away no more impressions can be formed. This conception corresponds very closely with the Buddhist, and the use of the term Samskāras, which is not a very natural one, possibly points to direct borrowing. A second similarity of great importance is the precise correspondence of the two ideas, of the Sāmkhya that the essential knowledge is to realize that anything empiric is not I, and of the Buddhist that it is essential to free oneself from the delusion that there is anything which is or belongs to the self. A further point of close similarity is the fact that both systems lay great stress on the conception of causality, and that they devote deep consideration to the nature of the world-process, though there is a great distinction between the Buddhist resolution of it into a series of impressions determined causally and the Sāmkhya conception of nature. Here, too, may be mentioned the definite correspondence between the four truths of the Buddhist system and the fourfold division of the doctrine of final release in the Sāmkhya-Yoga. The latter falls under the heads of that from which final release is to be sought, final release, the cause of that from which release is to be sought, and the means to attain release, which are compared with the medical heads of disease, health, the cause of disease, and healing. The four Buddhist truths are misery, the origin of misery, the removal of misery, and the means to its removal, which in one Buddhist text are compared with disease, its origin, its healing and the prevention of recurrence, but the similarity is not conclusive of borrowing. Yet a further striking parallelism with the Sāmkhya is the attitude of Buddhism towards the end of endeavour. It is perfectly plain that this is not looked upon as annihilation, however clear it is that it is metaphysically nothing else: the doctrine of the Buddha is full of the savour of Nirvāna, and the repeated occurrence of that term in the epic suggests that the expression was borrowed from the Brahmanical speculations by the Buddhists. Similarly in the case of the Sāmkhya, though the attainment of knowledge would really be the end of all real existence and nothingness, it is expressly recorded that this is not the aim of the seekers after the true knowledge, who on the contrary attain isolation as something in itself enduring and perfect.