The Samkhya System: A History of the Samkhya Philosophy c6.12

c6.12

These points, as well as the common possession of the rejection of the absolute, are striking, but at the same time it must be remembered that, in addition to the absence of the doctrine of the Guṇas, there is one other case of the first importance in which the Sāmkhya is very different from, and more advanced than, Buddhism. The Sāmkhya goes to the logical extreme, in its treatment of the difference between spirit and all else, of attributing the whole of the apparent empiric existence to the activity of nature, though that activity is only conscious by the union of nature with spirit. It therefore postulates that there is no real union of spirit and nature: and in this result it is quite logical, but, of course, at the same time it brings about its own refutation since, if there is no union, there can be no release. In the Buddhist view the release is regarded as a real one, not as something which is unreal and unconnected with the substitute for self in Buddhism. Nor has Buddhism any of the imagery by which nature is represented as a dancer performing for the benefit of spirit, or the union of spirit and nature is regarded as the union of the lame and the blind. In this and in its elaborate series of psychological conceptions, it is clear that the Sāmkhya as we know it is far more advanced than Buddhism.