Indian Philosophy v1.c9.2

v1.c9.2

Introduction—The fluid and indefinite character of the teaching of the Upaniṣads—Western students of the Upaniṣads—Date—Early Upaniṣads—The great thinkers of the age—The hymns of the Ṛg-Veda and the doctrine of the Upaniṣads compared—Emphasis on the monistic side of the hymns—The shifting of the centre from the object to the subject—The pessimism of the Upaniṣads—The pessimistic implications of the conception of saṃsāra—Protest against the externalism of the Vedic religion—Subordination of the Vedic knowledge—The central problems of the Upaniṣads—Ultimate reality—The nature of Ātman distinguished from body, dream consciousness and empirical self—The different modes of consciousness, waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep and ecstasy—The influence of the Upaniṣad analysis of self on subsequent thought—The approach to reality from the object side—Matter, life, consciousness, intelligence and ānanda—Śaṃkara and Rāmānuja on the status of ānanda—Brahman and Ātman—Tat tvam asi—The positive character of Brahman—Intellect and intuition—Brahman and the world—Creation—The doctrine of māyā—Deussen’s view examined—Degrees of reality—Are the Upaniṣads pantheistic?—The finite self—The ethics of the Upaniṣads—The nature of the ideal—The metaphysical warrant for an ethical theory—Moral life—Its general features—Asceticism—Intellectualism—Jñāna, Karma and Upāsana—Morality and religion—Beyond good and evil—The religion of the Upaniṣads—Different forms—The highest state of freedom—The ambiguous accounts of it in the Upaniṣads—Evil—Suffering—Karma—Its value—The problem of freedom—Future life and immortality—Psychology of the Upaniṣads—Non-Vedāntic tendencies in the Upaniṣads—Sāṃkhya—Yoga—Nyāya—General estimate of the thought of the Upaniṣads—Transition to the epic period.