Indian Philosophy v2.c26.s8.39

v2.c26.s8.39

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.”