An Analysis of the Brahma Sutra - 2.4. - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Friday, February 12, 2021. 12 : 06. PM.
Chapter-2. The Critique of Erroneous Doctrines - 4.

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Karma is the cause of rebirth. Karma is the repercussion produced by the action of someone. This someone does not exist, because existence is momentary. Momentariness is almost equivalent to saying that it is non-existent. So who will take rebirth? How will suffering be explained?, which Buddha emphasised very much – there is suffering, we have to overcome suffering.

This peculiar difficulty in understanding the real point behind what Buddha said created a discussion by another set of Buddhists leading to nihilism. If everything is momentary, neither does samsara exist nor does karma exist. Non-existence is the final word of nihilistic philosophy. But the nihilists made the same mistake as the Sankhya doctrine became self-contradictory.

Sankhya looked very logical, very acceptable, very beautiful from outside, but inside it was vacuous due to the defects already pointed out. So is this so-called boast and adumbration of nihilism, sunyavada. Who is saying that nothing exists? Who is talking? Is the non-existence itself saying that non-existence is there? Does the philosopher of nihilism exist? If the philosopher of nihilism does not exist because nihilism abolishes the existence of everyone, then who is making a declaration that nothing exists?

The Vedanta comes in and says this argument cannot be accepted. Brahma Sutra refutes it. There must be someone to know that nothing exists. That someone must be existing. It is something like the argument which the Western philosopher Rene Descartes posed before himself. Everything may be doubtful; the world may not be existing; I may not be existing; nothing may be there at all; all things are dubious. It may be so. Some devil might have entered my mind and is making me think erroneously. But he concluded as a wise one that the consciousness that everything is doubtful cannot itself be doubted. "Therefore "I am"."

In a similar way, the Vedanta accepts that there should be an awareness of there being nothing. If sunyavada accepts that there is an awareness which alone can say 'nothing exists', then the doctrine of nothingness is defeated out and out. Something is.

To be continued ...

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