English
This world is not con- tradicted in our world-experience; but, as each and every entity of this world is produced by other things or entities, and they again by others, and as we cannot specify the nature of each one of them without referring to others which produced them or from which they originated, and tracing those again to other causes and . dve satye samupasritya buddhanam dharma-desana loka-samurti-satyam ca satyam ca paramarthatah. Maddhyamika-sitra, xxiv. 8, p. 492, B.B. edition. 2 Ajnanam hi samantat sarva-padartha-tattvavacchadanat samurtir ity ucyate. Ibid. Candrakirti however gives two other meanings of the word samurti, which do not seem to be so closely connected with the etymology. In the first of the two meanings samurti means interdependent origination or pratitya-samutpdda, and in the second it means the conventional world of common-sense, which can be expressed or indicated by speech and language and which we are supposed to know and refer to in all our experiences involving the knower and the known— samurtih samketo loka-vyavaharah, sa ca abhidhanabhidheya-jnana-jneyadilak- sanah. I-2 4 The Sankara School of Vedanta [on. so. on, it is not possible to assert anything as to the nature or characteristic (svabhava) of anything as it is. Things are known to us only as being the result of the combination of many entities or as product complexes. Nothing is produced of itself, and so the pro- ducts are never by themselves self-existent, but exist only through the coming together of different entities. That which has any nature of its own cannot owe its origination to other complexes, and so there is nothing in our world-experience which has a nature of its own. The apparent reality of the world has therefore the mysterious veil of ignorance over it, and it is this veil of ignorance which is referred to by the term loka-samurta. This is spoken of also as tathya-samurtt (real ignorance), as distinguished from mithyd-samurti (false ignor- ance), properly used of the ordinary illusions and hallucinations of magic, mirage reflections, etc.1 Those appearances which are due to sense-defects or other causes and are therefore contradicted in experience are called mithya-samurta, because their falsehood is discovered in experience. The falsehood of the world-appearances, however, can be realized only when their real nature (paramartha- riipa) as a succession of essenceless products of causal complexes is properly understood. The world holds good and remains un- contradicted and has all the appearance of reality in all our practical experiences, and it is only when it is understood that these pheno- mena have no nature of their own that they are considered false. All teachings in philosophy take for granted the world-appearances, subjective and objective, and try to give a rational analysis and estimate of them; and it is only through an experience of these world-phenomena and a rational understanding of them that one realizes their truth as being a mere flow of causes and effects devoid of essence. The appearance of the world as reality is therefore true only in a limited manner during the period when the veil of ignor- ance is not removed from our eyes; and this is signified by designating the truth (satya) of the world as only loka-samurta. This world-appearance is however relatively true when compared with the ordinary illusions of perception (when, e.g., a piece of rope is perceived as a snake, or when one sees a mirage in a desert). But a question arises—if the world-appearance has no essence of its own, how is it that it appears to have one, or how is it that the world-phenomena appear at all? To such a question Nagarjuna’s answer is that the appearance of the world is like the 1 Bodhi-caryavatara-panjika, p. 353, Biblotheca Indica Series, 1902. x1] The World-Appearance 5 appearance of mirages or dreams, which have no reality of their own, but still present an objective appearance of reality. The world is not a mere nothing, like a lotus of the sky or the hare’s horn, which are simply non-existent (avidyamana). Thus there is not only the ultimate truth (paramartha); there is also the relative truth of the phenomenal world (loka-samurti-satya); there are, further, the sense-illusions, hallucinations and the like which are. contradicted in ordinary experience (aloka-samurta or mithya- samvrta), and also that which is merely non-existent, like the hare’s horn. The error (viparyasa) of world-appearance is considered as being of four kinds, viz. the consideration of the momentary as eternal, the consideration of the painful as being pleasurable, the consideration of the unholy as holy, and of that which has no soul as having a soul?. And this error is due to ignorance (avidyd). Candrakirti quotes a passage from the Arya-drdhasaya-pariprecha, in which it is said that, just as a man may see in a dream that he is spending the night with the wife of the king, and, suddenly realizing that he is discovered, tries to fly for fear of his life (thus perceiving the presence of a woman, where there is none), so we are always falling into the error of asserting that we have per- ceived the manifold world-appearance where there is none?. Such analogies of error naturally suggest the supposition that there must be some reality which is mistaken as some other thing; but, as has already been explained, the Buddhists emphasized the fact that, in dreams, the illusory appearances were no doubt objec- tively known as objective presentations of which we had previously become aware—experiences through which we pass, though there is no reality on which these appearances rest or are imposed. It was here that Sankara differed. Thus, in his introduction to the commentary on the Brahma-siitra he says that the essence of all illusory perception is that one thing is mistaken for another, that the qualities, characteristics or attributes of one thing are taken for the qualities, characteristics or attributes of another. Illusion is defined as the false appearance in some object of something 1 Madhyamika-sitra, xxi11. 8. 2 Tha catvaro viparyasa ucyante: tadyathd pratiksana-vinasint skandha- pancake yo nityam iti grahah sa viparydasah. . .duhkhatmake skandha-paficake yah sukham iti viparito grahah so ’paro viparyasah,. . . Sartram asuci-svabhavam tatra yo sucitvena grahah sa viparydsah,...pafica-skandham niratmakam tasmin ya atma-grahah andtmani atmabhnivesah sa viparyasah. Candrakirti’s commentary on ibid. xxi11. 13. Compare it with the Yoga-sitra, 11. 5, Anandagrama Series. 3 Candrakirti’s commentary on the Madhyamtka-sitra, Xxill. 13. V 6 The Sankara School of Vedanta [cH. experienced before, resembling a memory image. It is explained by some as being the false affirmation of the characteristics of one thing in regard to another; ‘others explain it as an error due to the non- apprehension of the difference between that which is wrongly apprehended and the misapprehended object which the former is wrongly supposed to be; others think that, when one thing is misapprehended as another, the illusion consists in the fancying of the former entity as being endowed with strange characteristics (viparita-dharmatva); but in all these different ways of analysis illusion fundamentally is nothing but the false appearance of one thing with the characteristics of another. So also it may be- that a conch-shell appears as silver or that one moon appears as two moons!. Sankara then suggests that, since the universal self (pratyag-atman) is felt through our feeling of ‘‘I” and since it is immediate in all experience (aparoksa), it is not absolutely un- related and unindicated (avisaya) in experience, and consequently it is quite possible that the non-self (anatman) and its character- istics may be illusorily imposed upon the universal self. ‘This illusory imposition of the non-self and its characteristics on the universal self is called nescience (avidya). In his commentary on Gaudapada’s Karika, 1. 17, Sankara says that, when a piece of rope falsely appears as a snake, this is merely false imposition or appearance, not existence. The illusory appear- ance of the snake did not really bring into existence a snake, which later on became non-existent when right knowledge super- vened. It was a mere illusion, and the rope-snake had no existence at all?. Sankara in commenting on Gaudapada’s Karika explains / with approval Gaudapada’s view that the world of common ex- perience is as illusory as a dream. Dreams are false; for in a dream a man may have the experience of going to distant places, and yet, when he wakes up, he finds that he has been asleep for a few seconds only, and has not moved a foot from his bed. The dream experiences are therefore false, because they are contradicted by the waking experiences. But the waking experiences, being similar to dream experiences, are equally false. For both sets of ex- periences involve the duality of subject and object, and are therefore 1 Sankara’s Adhydsa-bhdsya on the Brahma-siitra, Nirnaya-Sagara Press, Bombay, 1904. * Rajjvam sarpa iva kalpitatvat na tu sa vidyate...na hi rajjvam bhranti- buddhya kalpitah sarpo vidyamanah san vivekato nivrttah; tathedam prapan- cakhyam maya-matram. Gaudapada’s Karikd, t. 17, Anandagrama Series. x1] The World-Appearance 7 fundamentally more or less the same: so that, if one of them is false, the other also is false. The world-experience is like other well-known instances of illusion—the mirage, for example. Since it had no existence in the beginning, and will not have any existence in the end, neither can it have existence in the intervening period of appearance.