English
The objection that our waking experiences fulfil practical purposes and have thus associated with them the prag- matic test of truth, which is absent in the case of dream experiences, is invalid; for the pragmatic tests of the waking experiences may well be contradicted by dream experiences; a man who goes to sleep after a sumptuous feast may well dream that he has been starving for days together. Both our inner world of mind and its experiences and the outer objective world are thus false creations!. ~ But Gaudapada and Sankara differ from the Siinyavadin Buddhists in this—that they think that even false creations must have some basis in truth. If a rope appears as a snake, the false creation of the snake has some basis in the truth of the rope: there could not be false creations and false appearances without any firm basis of truth (aspada) underlying them?. Nagarjuna, it will be re- membered, tried to prove the falsity of all appearances on the ground of their being interdependent and not having anything which could be pointed out as their own nature. The dialectic being applicable to all appearances, there was nothing left which was not relative and interdependent, nothing which was self- evident by nature and which was intelligible by itself without reference to anything else. It is this interdependence and relativity of all appearances that was called ‘“‘nothingness” or sanyata by Nagarjuna. There was nothing which could be affirmed of anything independently by itself without reference to something else ; nothing therefore could be conceived as having any essence by itself. All appearances were therefore only interdependent phantom crea- tions; and it was precisely this interdependence that proved the essencelessness of their natures. There was no basis of truth any- where. There was nothing which had any essence. But neither Sankara nor Gaudapada appears to have tried to show why the inner world of thoughts, ideas, emotions, volitions and the outer world of objects should be considered as being illusory appearances. 1 Sankara’s commentary on Gaudapada’s Kartkd, 11. 1-12. 2 Na hi niraspada rajju-sarpa-mrgatrsnikadayah kvacit upalabhyante. Ibid. Tal0: 8 The Sankara School of Vedanta [cH. Their main point seems to consist in a dogmatic statement that / all appearances or experiences are false just as dream experi- ences are false. The imperfect analogy of waking experiences is made into an argument, and the entire manifold of appearances is declared to be false. But it is urged at the same time that these false creations must have some basis of truth; the changing ap- pearances must have some unchanging basis on which they are imposed—and this basis is the self (atman), or Brahman, which is the only thing that is permanent, unchanging and real. This self is the being of pure intelligence, which is one identical unit, negating all differences and duality (visuddha-vijnapti-matra-satta- dvaya-riipena):. Just as the false creation of “‘snake”’ appears in the case of the ‘‘rope,” so all such judgments as “I am happy,” “I am unhappy,” “I am ignorant,” ‘I am born,” “I am old,” “I am with a body,” “‘I perceive,” etc., are all merely false predications associated with the self; they are all false, changing and illusory predications, and it is only the self which remains permanent through all such judgments. The self is entirely different from all such predications; it is self-luminous and self-manifesting, shining independently by itself. By applying the dialectic of mutual interdependence, pratitya- samutpada, Nagarjuna tried to prove that there was nothing which could be pointed out as the essence of anything as it is; but he did not explain how the appearances which were nothing more than phantom creations came to be what they were. How did the world-appearance of essenceless interdependent phenomena show itself? Sankara did not try to prove with a keen logical dialectic that the world-appearance was false: he simply took it for granted, since the Upanisads proclaimed Brahman as the ultimate reality. But how did the world-appearance manifest itself? Sankara does not seem to go deeply into this question and simply passes it over in asserting that this world-appearance is all due to ignorance (avidyda); it could not be spoken of as either existing or non-existing ; it was merely illusory, like the conch-shell silver. But Padmapada, who wrote the commentary known as Pafica-padika on the first four sitras of Sankara’s commentary on the Brahma- siitras, says that the precise meaning of the term “‘ false conception” (mithya-jnana) in Sankara’s introduction to his commentary on the Brahma-siitras is that there is a force or power or potency (Sakti) of 1 Gaudapada’s Karikd, 11. 17. xq] The World-Appearance 9 nescience which constitutes materiality (jadatmika avidya-saktih), and that it is this potency which transforms itself into the stuff (upadana) of the world-appearance?. It is well to remember in this connection that, according to Sankara’s philosophy, it is not only the objective world that constitutes the world of appearance, but also the subjective world of all experiences and predicates that may be associated with the self. Thus, when one says “I,” this ego-hood is analysed as involving two parts—the one, pure in- telligence or pure consciousness; and the other, the concept of subjectivity, which is illuminated, expressed or manifested by the underlying pure intelligence with which it is falsely associated. The concept of subjectivity stands here as materiality, or objec- tivity, which is made to float up by the power of pure intelligence, thus causing the judgment “I am” or “I am a man?.” This avidya-sakti, or power of avidya, subsists in the pure self and, on the one hand, arrests the revelation of its true nature as Brahman, and, on the other hand, transforms itself into the various concepts associated with the psychological self of our ordinary experience. The illusion consists in the association of the psycho- logical qualities of thinking, feeling, willing, etc. with the trans- cendent or universal self (pratyak-citi). These psychological deter- minations are all mutually connected with one another. Thus, to be able to enjoy pleasures, one must first act; one can only act when one has attachments, antipathies and desires, and one can have attachments and desires only when one has experienced joys and sorrows—so these psychological determinations in a beginning- less cycle are always naturally associated with the transcendent self-luminous self. It should be clear from the foregoing discussion that, as Padmapada or Prakasatman explains, ajfdma or nescience is some kind of indefinable stuff out of the transformations of which subjective psychological experiences and the world of objects have come into being. This ajfana is not the ajfana of the Buddhists, i.e. a wrong notion or misconception, and this adhyasa, or illusion, 1 Pafica-padika, p. 4, the Vizianagram Sanskrit Series, 1891. 2 asmat-pratyaye yo ’nidam-amésas cid-eka-rasah tasmims tad-bala-nirbhasita- taya laksanato yusmad-arthasya manusyabhimanasya sambhedaivavabhasah sa eva adhyasah. Ibid. p. 3. 3 atah sad pratyak-citi brahma-svariipavabhasam pratibadhnati ahamkardad- y-atad-ripa-pratibhasa-nimittam ca bhavati. Ibid. p. 5. 4 Prakagatman’s Pafica-padikd-vivarana, p. 10, the Vizianagram Sanskrit Series, 1892. 10 The Sankara School of Vedanta [cH. is not the viparyaya of Nagarjuna; for here it is a positive power or stuff. Thus Prakagatman argues that all effects have at their back some cause, which forms their stuff or material; the world- appearance, being also an effect, must have some stuff out of which it has evolved or was made up; and ajfana, lying in the trans- cendent self as a separate power, is such a material cause}. This avidya-potency in the transcendent self is positive in its nature. This positive ajfana is directly perceived in such immediate per- ceptions as ‘‘I do not know myself or others,” and can also be inferred or comprehended by implication?. The fact that ajfana or avidya is spoken of as a power inherent in the transcendent self shows that it is dependent thereon ; avidyd is not, however, a power, but a substance or entity which has certain powers by which it transforms itself into the cosmic appearances, subjective and ob- jective; yet it is called a power, or sakti, because of its dependence (para-tantrata) on the transcendent self, and it is in consideration of the entire dependence of avidya and its transformations on the self that the self is regarded as the material cause of all effects— the cosmic appearances of the world and the mind’. The self thus not only holds the ajfana within it as a dependent function, but in spite of its self-luminosity it can be reacted upon by the ajfiana with its manifold powers in such a way that it can be veiled by this ajfiana and made the underlying basis of all world- appearances of ajfidna-transformations?. Appaya Diksita, referring in his Siddhanta-lesa to the view of the writer of the Padartha-tattva, summarizes the matter thus: Brahman and Maya form together the material cause (ubhayam upadanam), and hence it is that in the world-appearance there are two distinct characteristics, “‘being” (satta) from Brahman and materiality (ja@dya) from Maya. Brahman is the cause, as the unchanging basis of the Maya, which is the cause as being the 1 sarvam ca karyam sopddanam bhava-karyatvat ghatadivad ity anumanat 0 me oe ...tasman mithyartha-taj-jndnatmakam mithya-bhiitam adhyadsam updddana- karana-sapeksam...mithyd-jfianam eva adhydsopadanam. Patica-padikd-vivarana, pp. II-12. * Ibid. p. 13. 3 gaktir ity dtma-para-tantrataya atmanah sarva-karyopadanasya nirvodh- rtvam. Ibid. p. 13.