An Analysis of the Brahma Sutra - 2.3. - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Monday, January 25, 2021. 07 : 16. AM.

Chapter-2. The Critique of Erroneous Doctrines - 3.

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Sankhya said something. The other day we discussed Sankhya. It is a very famous philosophy. Most people accept it. The presence of Purusha and Prakriti, consciousness and matter, is accepted and these words are used in such great texts like Mahabharata, Bhagavad Gita, Manu Smriti etc. Such noble textbooks of highest authority are using words like Prakriti and Purusha. So this will make us feel there is some truth in it. Why does the Bhagavad Gita go on using the word Prakriti and Purusha, when Sankhya is rejected by the Brahma Sutras? Now we shall not enter into the other subject as to why they are using these words.

The main objection against Sankhya is the assertion of duality; One thing is different from another thing. But the Samkhya forgets it is not possible to know that one thing is different from another thing unless there is a third thing which knows the difference. The one thing which is different from the other thing cannot know that the other thing exists at all. So there is a flaw in the argument. The third thing is necessary, which the Sankhya does not accept. It is caught up by a vicious argument of the self-sufficiency of Purusha and Prakriti. And even its concept of liberation is inadequate, because the Sankhya believes that separation of Purusha and Prakriti from contact of each other is liberation. But there is a defect here. Purusha is liberated – all right, okay, from contact with Prakriti, and Purusha is accepted to be omniscient, all-pervading consciousness. But Sankhya contradicting this statement says Prakriti also exists. In liberation, Prakriti is not destroyed; where does it exist? It exists outside Purusha. Then where is the infinity of the consciousness of Purusha?

Is Purusha omniscient, all-knowing? Yes, it is. If it is all-knowing, it must be knowing the existence of Prakriti also. The moment it knows the existence of Prakriti, it gets caught in bondage. And bondage will be permanently there. The idea of liberation in the Sankhya is not acceptable for obvious reasons.

There are other schools which deny the existence of the Atman itself, like nihilism or sunyavada, a trend in Buddhistic philosophy. 'Nothing is'. This idea that nothing is arose from another series of discourses given by Buddha himself. Buddha did not say that nothing exists, but something followed from his standpoint. He said that everything is moving and nothing is existing at any particular point, even for a moment, like the flow of the waters of a river. Not for a single moment does the water stand at one place. The river is not a stable object; it is movement. That we are unable to perceive the continuous movement of the waters in a river is the reason why we mistake that the river is a solid water reservoir.

In the same way, the mind does not exist. The mind is only an imagined centralisation of a point as is the point imagined in the flow of a river. Not for a moment does anything exist to continue to see. But Buddha accepted rebirth and samsara, from which he advocated freedom. Now what is this he is saying? Who will take rebirth? That person who is to take rebirth does not exist even for a moment, according to the accepted doctrine.

To be continued .....

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