Indian Philosophy v2.c26.s8: Ethics and Religion
Indian Philosophy v2.c26.s8
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Ethics and Religion
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Gauḍapāda raises the question of the relation between the supreme principle Ātman and the phenomenal world. If we are earnest students of truth (paramārthacintakāḥ) and not mere speculators about creation (sṛṣṭicintakāḥ), we shall see that there is no such thing as creation at all. The real cannot be subject to change. If it be, then "the immortal would become mortal."³ "In no way is it possible that a thing can be changed into something quite the opposite."⁴ All becoming is unreal, valid only in the empirical world. In reality, there is nothing like distinction (nāsti bhedaḥ kathaṃcana).⁵ The Ātman, which is the one unconditioned reality, is cognisant of nothing beside itself. As Śaṃkara says: "Objects are cognised by a subject in action, not by one in simple subsistence." How this adhyāsa, or confusion of self with not-self, arises, how the one appears as manifold, since the indivisible Ātman cannot be really divided, is unaccountable, though the fact of the confusion cannot be gainsaid, and sometimes it is argued that it is necessary to seek for an explanation of the world even though it is not real.⁶ Gauḍapāda considers the different alternatives suggested to account for creation. "Some regard it as the manifestation of God (vibhūti), while others regard it as of the nature of dream or illusion (svapnamāyā); others maintain that it is the will of God, while those who believe in time declare that everything proceeds from time (kāla). Some say that creation is for the sake of enjoyment (bhoga), while others hold that it is for sport (krīḍā).” Gauḍapāda rejects all these views and declares that “it is the inherent nature of the shining one (devasyaiṣa svabhāvo yam). What desire can he have who has attained all?”¹ Rejecting, therefore, the view that the world is comparable to a dream or an illusion, Gauḍapāda contends that it is the manifestation of the very nature of God, the expression of his power. A realistic conception of the world also comes out in other passages. “The Ātman imagines himself by himself through the power of his māyā (svamāyayā). He alone cognises the objects so sent forth. This is the last word of the Vedānta on the subject.”² Here Gauḍapāda uses the word “māyā” in the sense of wondrous power; it becomes the svabhāva, or the nature of the Ātman, “inseparable from the ever-luminous who is hidden by it.”³ Māyā is also said to be the beginningless cosmic principle which hides reality from the vision of man.⁴ The absolute, together with this principle of māyā or svabhāva, which is the unmanifested (avyākṛtam), is the Īśvara, “who sends forth all the centres of consciousness.”⁵
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³ iii. 19.
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⁴ iii. 21.
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⁵ iii. 15, 9 and 24.
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⁶ i. 17–18.
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¹ i. 7-9.
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² ii. 12. See also iii. 10.
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³ ii. 19.
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⁴ i. 16.
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⁵ i. 6.
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The illustrations of earth, iron and sparks of fire used in the Upaniṣads are meant only to help us to a realisation of the absolute.⁶ In later Vedānta this position is elaborated into the view of adhyāropāpavāda, or an illusory attribution to be followed by withdrawal.⁷ The metaphysical truth contained in these statements is that the empirical world has for its substratum the Ātman, which, in reality, is a non-cognition of all duality (dvaitasyāgrahaṇam).⁸ “The world of duality is mere māyā, the real being the non-dual.”⁹ Śaṃkara says: “The variety of experience subsists in the Ātman, as the snake does in the rope.”¹⁰ We should not say that the Ātman converts itself into the world. It gives birth to things as a rope does to a snake, and not in reality.¹ It appears to become many only through māyā, and not of itself (na tattvataḥ).² "The existence of the variety of experience cannot be said to be identical with the Ātman, nor in any way standing independently by itself, and nothing is different or identical."³ The world is neither one with the Ātman nor different from it. When Gauḍapāda has his attention fixed on the supreme reality, he declares that the world is only a dream or an illusion, and that the differences are only apparent.⁴
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⁶ iii. 15.
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⁷ Vedāntasāra, ii.
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⁸ i. 13, 17.
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⁹ Māyāmātram idaṃ dvaitam advaitam paramārthataḥ (ii. 17).
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¹⁰ S.B. on ii. 12, 19.
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¹ iii. 27; ii. 17.
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² iii. 27.
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³ ii. 34.
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⁴ iii. 19, 24; iv. 45. See also ii. 18.
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The word māyā is not used by Gauḍapāda with any strictness. It is used to indicate (1) the inexplicability of the relation between the Ātman and the world; (2) the nature or power of Īśvara; (3) the apparent dreamlike character of the world. The first is brought into greater prominence by Śaṁkara, who is indifferent to the third, which makes Gauḍapāda’s position more akin to the Saṃvṛtisatya or untruth, of the Mādhyamikas rather than to the Vyāvahārikasatya or practical truth.⁵
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⁵ Gauḍapāda regards the empirical world of things (dharmas) as a mere illusion like the sky (gaganopama). Knowledge is said to be as imaginary as the sky and non-different from the objects (jñeyābhinna).
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If the world is the objectivisation of the mind (cittaḍṛśyam) imposed on the absolute Ātman, so is the jīva. The individuation of the Ātman into the many jīvas is only apparent. Ātman is compared to universal space, and the jīva to the same enclosed in a jar; and when the enclosure is destroyed, the limited space (ghaṭākāśa) merges into the universal space (mahākāśa). The differences are only in such accidents as form, capacity and name, but not in the universal space itself. Even as we cannot say that the limited space is either a part (avayava) or an effect (vikāra) of universal space, we cannot say that the jīva is either a part or an effect of the Ātman. The two are one, and the differences are apparent, though for practical purposes we have to treat the two as distinct.⁶
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⁶ iii. 3-14.
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The supreme good for man consists in the breaking down of the fetters that shut him out from the reality which he is. Freedom consists in the realisation of the Ātman in the individual soul.¹ The freed soul "is never born, being beyond the range of causality."² When one realises the truth, he will live in the world with a sublime unconcern comparable to the perfect indifference of inanimate nature (jaḍavat).³ He is not bound by the conventional rules and regulations.⁴
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¹ ii. 18, 38.
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² iv. 75; iii. 38.
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³ ii. 36.
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⁴ ii. 37.
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The ethical endeavour consists in a progressive approximation to the highest good. The distinctions of good and evil are relevant to the world of experience, where the jīvas possess the sense of individuality. Since avidyā is something which affects man's personality as a whole, in order to get rid of it not only right knowledge but good conduct and devotion to God are necessary. Religion helps us to the attainment of the supreme good. Full liberty of worship is allowed to the finite soul, who can image the infinite in any way he chooses, since all forms rest on the one absolute.⁵ The form of religion, resting on the distinction between the human soul and God, is a relative one, adopted on account of its instrumental value.⁶ Gauḍapāda accepts the Yogic method as a means. "When the mind ceases from imagining, by a knowledge of the truth of the Ātman, it becomes naught, and remains at rest for want of things to cognise."⁷ The state is not to be identified with sleep, for it is knowledge which has for its object Brahman.⁸ It is beyond conceptual description, beyond all duality, in a region where jñāna is centred in the Ātman.⁹ The method of Yoga is a hard one, involving as it does the control of mind (manonigraha), so hard that Gauḍapāda compares it to the effort of the individual who is engaged in emptying the ocean drop by drop with the tip of a straw of kuśa grass.¹ The mind, however, should not stop in the enterprise until the ultimate bliss is attained.
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⁵ ii. 29-30.
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⁶ iii. 1.
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⁷ iii. 32.
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⁸ iii. 33-34.
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⁹ iii. 35-38.
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¹ iii. 40-41.
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GAUDAPĀDA AND BUDDHISM
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The general idea pervading Gauḍapāda’s work, that bondage and liberation, the individual soul and the world, are all unreal, makes the caustic critic observe that the theory which has nothing better to say than that an unreal soul is trying to escape from an unreal bondage in an unreal world to accomplish an unreal supreme good, may itself be an unreality. It is one thing to say that the secret of existence, how the unchangeable reality expresses itself in the changing universe without forfeiting its nature, is a mystery, and another to dismiss the whole changing universe as a mere mirage. If we have to play the game of life, we cannot do so with the conviction that the play is a show and all the prizes in it mere blanks. No philosophy can consistently hold such a view and be at rest with itself. The greatest condemnation of such a theory is that we are obliged to occupy ourselves with objects, the existence and value of which we are continually denying in theory. The fact of the world may be mysterious and inexplicable. It only shows that there is something else which includes and transcends the world; but it does not imply that the world is a dream. Later Buddhism is responsible for this exaggeration in Gauḍapāda’s theory. He seems to have been conscious of the similarity of his system to some phases of Buddhist thought. He therefore protests—rather overmuch—that his view is not Buddhism. Towards the end of his book he says: “This was not spoken by Buddha.”² Commenting on this, Śaṁkara writes: “The theory (of Buddhism) wears a semblance to the Advaita, but is not that absolutism which is the pivot of the Vedānta philosophy.”
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² Naitad buddhena bhāṣitam (iv. 99).
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Gauḍapāda’s work bears traces of Buddhist influence,¹ especially of the Vijñānavāda and the Mādhyamika schools. Gauḍapāda uses the very same arguments as the Vijñānavādins do to prove the unreality of the external objects of perception. Both Bādarāyaṇa and Śaṃkara strongly urge that there is a genuine difference between dream impressions and waking ones,² and that the latter are not independent of existing objects. Gauḍapāda, however, links the two, waking and dreaming, experiences together.³ While Śaṃkara is anxious to free his system from the subjectivism associated with vijñānavāda, Gauḍapāda welcomes it.⁴ Unwilling to accept the vijñānavāda as final, he declares that even the subject is as unreal as the object, and thus comes perilously near the nihilist position. In common with Nāgārjuna, he denies the validity of causation ⁵ and the possibility of change. “There is no destruction, no creation, none in bondage, none endeavouring (for release), none desirous of liberation, none liberated; this is the absolute truth.”⁶ The empirical world is traced to avidyā or, in Nāgārjuna’s phrase, saṃvṛti. “From a magical seed is born a magical sprout; this sprout is neither permanent nor perishing. Such are things and for the same reason.”⁷ The highest state beyond the distinctions of knowledge cannot be characterised by the predicates of existence, non-existence, both or neither. Gauḍapāda and Nāgārjuna regard it as something which transcends the phenomenal.⁸ In addition to these points of doctrine, there are affinities in phraseology which point unmistakably to the influence of Buddhism. The use of the word “dharma” for a thing or entity, “ saṃvṛti ” for relative knowledge, and “ saṃghāta ” for objective existence, is peculiarly Buddhistic.¹ The simile of the firebrand circle is often used in Buddhist writings as a symbol for unreality.²
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¹ There are some who believe that Gauḍapāda was himself a Buddhist, and wrote a commentary on the Mādhyamika Kārikā, since, in his opinion, Buddhism tallied with the system of the Upaniṣads. See Dasgupta: History of Indian Philosophy, pp. 423-428.
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² ii. 2. 28-32.
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³ ii. 4.
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⁴ iv. 24-28.
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⁵ ii. 32; iv. 4, 7, 22, 59.
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⁶ ii. 32; Mādhyamika Kārikā, i. 1. See also Yogavāsiṣṭha, iv. 38. 22. Na bandho 'sti na mokṣo 'sti nābandho 'sti na bandhanam Aprabodhād idaṃ duḥkham prabodhāt pravilīyate.
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⁷ iv. 59. This is a paraphrase of the Buddhistic doctrine that “from void things are born.”
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⁸ Prapañcopaśamam, ii. 35. Cp. Mādhyamika Kārikā, i. 1; also xx. 25. Sarvopalambhopaśamaḥ prapañcopaśamaḥ śivaḥ Na kvacit kasyacit kaścid dharmo buddhena deśitaḥ.
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¹ iii. 10; iv. 72.
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² Laṅkāvatāra, B.T.S. ed., p. 95. That Gauḍapāda gives us a Vedāntic adaptation of the Buddhist śūnyavāda is supported by many scholars, such as Jacobi, Poussin, Sukhtankar, and Vidhuśekhara Bhaṭṭācārya. Unfortunatety Śaṃkara explains away all obvious references to Buddhism. See S.B. on iv. 1, 2, 19, 42, 90, where striking references to Buddha and his doctrine are explained away.
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The Kārikā of Gauḍapāda is an attempt to combine in one whole the negative logic of the Mādhyamikas with the positive idealism of the Upaniṣads. In Gauḍapāda the negative tendency is more prominent than the positive. In Śaṃkara we have a more balanced outlook.
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IX
Linked texts (5)
- Āgamaśāstra — Gauḍapāda, Sanskrit
- Mūlamadhyamakakārikā — Nāgārjuna, Sanskrit
- Mokṣopāya — Vālmīki, Sanskrit
- Laṅkāvatārasūtra — Sanskrit
- Vedāntasāra — Sadānanda Yogīndra, Sanskrit