English
Says he, “that is Prakrti or nature which expresses itself as the original endowment of an animal at the very beginning of its present exist¬ ence, this being the result of latent dispositions accumulated from the past acts of merit or demerit; and it is in accordance with such prakrti that every animal even the intelligent (what to say of the ignorant?) person, energises.* ‘ Every man ac¬ cording to his light ’ is the motto here as elsewhere. There is, however, the other word swabhdva which is indiscriminately used as a synonym of prakrti (nsfo:), but on closer inspection it will be found that Samkara stipulates for something addi¬ tional in favour of the former. To quote his own words on the point :f “ the intrinsic nature of the supreme Brahman is the inner Self in every organ¬ ism, and thus by ‘ one’s own nature ’ is meant the spiritual (nature of man); and by the word ‘ spiritual nature ’ is meant that being or essence which, extending beyond the body and soul, terminates, by way of the inner Self of all selves, in the supreme Brahman in its integral essence. Thus there has been brought out a nice distinction between the two : etuflj U(f arcpfcmufa Com. on Bhagavad- Oita, Chap. Ill, verse 88 . t vfa wrer wrt. aamraron' ifir vim* tvsfraw wamwnwr *13 wnvtswvwg'vft Com. on Bhagavad- Oita, Chap. VIII, verse 8 . 356 A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA the word prakrti is used with reference to the instinctive, non-moral, animal spontaneity, while the term swabhdva is reserved for the higher sponta¬ neity of realised moral perfection. Clearly, one is used with retrospective reference to the potential, and the other with prospective reference to the actualised spiritual essence of man, in his progres¬ sive effort of self-realisation. Now, whatever bo the ambiguity lurking in Samkara’s usage of the term nature, prakrti or swabhdva —although he has spared no pains to demarcate the respective scopes of each—he is un¬ ambiguously clear as regards the ultimate seat of all moral causality or the exercise of free will. All such power of self-determination or autonomy is un¬ reservedly given over to man as a spiritual being, as homo noumenon, as a citizen of the mumlus intelligibilis. This is the solution, offered by Samkara, of the hopeless tangle besetting the ‘ free¬ will ’ controversy. With remarkable insight he lays his finger on the crucial question in this seem¬ ingly insoluble controversy. “ Does this agency or causality ” as Samkara asks* so pertinently, “ be¬ long only to the so-called assemblage of conditions or concomitants of action, or does it originate in the sheer volition of a being, independent of this assemblage of conditions, as the driving power at the back of mind, etc? ” It is by means of the •fit ftNr vwwWk wnfiftafesaq f—Com. on Kena Upanishad, 1 . 1 . ♦the ethics of the vedAhTa 357 triple stratification of human nature into life, mind and spirit, that Samkara-Vedanta has succeeded in providing a way out of this maze of controversy, into which it has been perpetually condemned by European writers on this theme, on account of their failure to rise above the plane of mind to which the tacit appeal always lies. Seldom do they stop to enquire whether the mind is equal to the task of discharging the obligation that is thrust upon it. It seems scarcely to have occurred to them that the mind may be, after all, as much mechanical as the sensory apparatus from which it is scrupulously dis¬ tinguished, and that the partiality for mind as being non-mechanical or non-materialistic may turn out on closer analysis to be an illusion, or at best a pious hope. Does not even the conceived possibility of a statics and mechanics of the soul cast a justified suspicion and slur on the self-complacent assertion : mens agitat molem? By following the line of least resistance, the mind as confronted with equally powerful but conflicting motives, may, like Buri- dan’s ass, shuffle into mechanical equilibrium— with the same mechanical necessity that charac¬ terises the laws of the dynamics of a particle. Where, then, does the alleged free causality lie? The prima facie evidence, however, is against the mind as a claimant for that agency or power. Samkara’s handling of this aspect of the theme is equally convincing and telling : ‘ ‘ that the mind is not the independent (self-determining, free agency it has been painted to be) in so far as it goes forth to court the sharpest pangs—the object of a natural 358 A systematic study of the vedAnTa aversion and avoidance—in spite of its being check¬ ed therein. Hence the enquiry ‘ by whom is it impelled ’ is a pertinent one.”* Hence we must seek for the evidence of the play of free causality in some other direction. It is not in action, that comes about by following the line of least resistance, but in action in the face of the greatest resistance that we find the striking evidence of the alleged freedom of man as a spiritual, and not merely mind- endowed, being. To quote his final verdict on the point: f “ hence this is said to be the object of human free will—the (original, unregenerate) nature of man, which is conditioned by attachment and aversion, impels a man to pursue a particular line of conduct.while a man who resolutely sets jus face against these (instinctive) attachments and aversions, becomes endowed with a spiritual vision, and thus is not subject to nature-necessity (and therefore free).” But this negative or inhibitory movement of self-discipline is not the last word of moral life. This entire set of natural outgoing impulses is to be moralised and disciplined only by restraining them in the path of rectitude and there¬ by pressing them into the service of the moral life * ro: *r wiwT nWW ww wd wnwft vrtft i toth 3 * v* m:—Ibid. t to 4 srorrcw fare wwft.w ft tow awth: wt rrciv www 3*: wptfir rt w ftmwft , TO awwWs HTOwvfa * mrfTOi:—Com. on Bhagavad-Gita, Chap. Ill, verse 84. THE ETHICS OE THE VEDANTA 359 ). * This fully attests ‘ the expulsive power of a higher affection ’—the centre of gravity having been shifted from a merely negative to a positive aspect of spiritual culture and realisation. This naturally leads to the question of Moksha (flVen 1 or Bedemption as the Life Eternal ( KWH** ijYc) and the disciplines incidental thereto ( ifararepnfi! )• It is, admittedly, the supreme end C UTWgWTH: ), the ne plus ultra of human Good which goes beyond good and evil of ethical valuation and empirical existence ; and that is just the reason why at this point individualism is at its strongest, with distracting varieties of opinion regarding the supreme Good, and the accessory means of realising it. Now, the stable ground, that emerges from among the shifting scenes of view-points, and to which all alike appeal, as their inevitable pre¬ supposition, is that the ideal of Vcdantic ethics is self-realisation, the attainment of happiness—which is but the feeling of self-realisodness—being a neces¬ sary concomitant thereof. Accordingly, there must needs be differences in the formulation of the supreme end and its unfailing co-efficients, depend¬ ing, as they do, on the nature of the self (which, in the language of mathematics, may be called an ‘ independent variable ’) as conceived in the different schools of Vedanta. Now we are fairly familiar with the notion of ‘self ’ as obtaining in the different schools of Vedanta. The.concept of ‘end’ or ‘good,’ together with that of ‘ happiness,’ as current in the ♦Com. on B. G., IT. 60, ggO A SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE VEDANTA Sainkara-Vedanta school, has been very ably dealt with by the author of the V edantaparibhashd in the last • chapter of the book. Having defined 'prayojanam ’ as ‘that which being known is desired as the mode of one’s psychical existence ’ (Qtpnirt srafwraT Wff ip a Vap fff), the Veddntapari - bhashft classifies ‘ ends ’ under two heads : primary or direct and secondary or indirect, happiness and absence of misery being the primary, and all else standing in an accessory or instrumental relation to one of these being the secondary end.* Similar¬ ly, happiness which, though not perhaps 'our being’s end and aim,’ something ‘for which we bear to live, or dare to die,’ is yet accorded even by the rigoristic Kant the due share of its importance in the framing of the ftummum bonum, is here with scrupulous honesty acknowledged to be the primary or ultimate end of action. The bliss that is thus contemplated is not merely the absence of pain or misery—something purely negative in character as in the orthodox Samkhya formulation of it—but demands the attainment of positive happiness, there being, no proxy to answer for it in absentia. Now, happiness, as the VedantaparibhSsliS has it, admits of a two fold division into relative or empirical and absolute or transcendental; one arising from the contact with external objects and admitting of more or less through differences of mental functioning, while the other is the ne phis ultra of happiness * aw [$M] tfNtfin aw ijwJ THE ETHICS OF THE VEDINTA 361 which is Brahman itself.* Following this line of reflexion, Moksha or the state of redemption is de¬ fined as the attainment of Brahman which is the very essence of Ananda or bliss and the consequent negation of all suffering or misery qifH'q jfarfrgftrar). This at once disposes of the misconstructions of Moksha as the attainment of another world, or empirical happiness arising there¬ from ; for, on all such hypotheses, moksha becomes contingent on activity, and hence unenduring or mutable, and that, again, entailing the relapse of the liberated into the mundane cycle of existence.