A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c9.6

c9.6

10. Contrasted with this kind of Activism, however, stands that other kind of Activism, with which alone people are ordinarily familiar, namely, what we may call Phenomenal Activism. The Īśopanishad tells us that "a man should try to spend his life-span of a hundred years only in the constant performance of actions. It is thus only that he can hope not to be contaminated by actions" (S. 9. a). It is important to note that even though this passage from the Īśopanishad tells us that we should spend our life-time in doing actions, the actions that are here implied have no further range than possibly the small circumference of "sacrifice"; and further, the way in which, even in the midst of a life of action, freedom from contagion with the fruit of action may be secured is not here brought out with sufficient clearness. It is only later, when we come to the days of the Bhagavadgītā, that we see how even in the midst of the life of action actionlessness may be secured, only if attachment to action is annihilated once for all and no calculating desire is entertained for the fruit of action. The Īśopanishad does not supply these two links between the life of action and the goal of actionlessness and point out that actionlessness may be secured in the midst of action only through freedom from attachment to action, and the annihilation of any desire for the end of action. But, at any rate, it is evident that the Īśopanishad goes very much beyond the other Upanishads when it tries to reconcile the life of action with the life of knowledge. "To pitchy darkness do they go," it tells us, "who pursue the path of ignorance, namely the path of action. To greater darkness still do they go who devote themselves to the life of knowledge for its own sake. Sages have told us from very ancient times that knowledge leads to the one result, while action leads to the other. But he alone who can synthesise the claims of knowledge and action is able by means of action to cross the ocean of death and by means of knowledge to attain to immortality" (S. 9. b). In this way does the Īśopanishad try to reconcile the claims of knowledge and action, telling us that the life of bare contemplation and the life of bare activity are alike fraught with evil; but that he alone may be said to attain the goal of life who knows how to harmonise the two different paths. Thus we may see how the later claims of Aristotle for the contemplative life, and of Bacon for the active life, are prophetically reconciled by the philosopher of the Īśopanishad.