Indian Philosophy v2.c24.s19.20

v2.c24.s19.20

For some centuries, as we have already seen, the Buddhist standpoint, which defined things by their consequences, interpreted everything by its contexts, and denied self-sufficiency everywhere, dominated the mind of the country. Everything has being through mutual connections, and nothing exists in and for itself. As relations are the stuff of life, soul and matter are simply sets of relations. The Vaiśeṣika protests against this view and attempts to expound a more satisfactory plan, which reality seems to offer and justify. It takes its stand on the deliverance of the empirical consciousness, which deals first and last with real and separate things. The simplest and the widest spread of the characters of reality is that of things and relations between them. When we open our eyes we see spread out before us a material world with its different things and arrangements, on which thought can exercise itself; when we look within we find a non-material one with its terms and relations. Sound philosophy requires us to confine our attention to the things of experience, the objects of knowledge, and accept only such hypotheses as are found to be indispensable for the explanation of the order of experience. An analytic survey is the first need of an accurate philosophy, and the results of the Vaiśeṣika analysis are found set forth in the doctrine of the padārthas.