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PHILOSOPHY
Eternal India
encyclopedia
which is regarded as one of the sources of the
Vedanta
philosophy.
The Gita mainly epitomises the teachings of Krishna, the eighth in-
carnation of Vishnu. Before the advent of Krishna the teachings of
the
Upanishads
had been misinterpreted. The ideal of renunciation
of worldly things with which the
Upanishads
are permeated, not
being correctly understood, had led to belief in passivity as the
supreme state. Krishna gives the correct interpretation of the teach-
ings of the Upanishads to his disciple, Arjuna, who turns to him for
counsel. Renunciation, he points out, is renunciation not of the world
but wordliness, not of actions but of desires.
Karma
(literally deed)
leads to bondage if it increases the weight of desires and inflates the
ego. It leads to freedom if it helps to deny the self or to free one
from attachment to the fruits of action.
Krishna offers a way of spiritual life in which all can participate
according to each person's place in the class system. All men sur-
rendering themselves to the Divine will should fulfil their respective
duties (
svadharma
) in accordance with that scheme which is designed
by God in accordance with the varying propensities and capacities
of different people and is not arbitrary. "Better is one's
dharma
which
one may be able to fulfil but imperfectly than the
dharma
of others
which is more easily accomplished. Better is death in the fulfilment
of one's own
dharma.
The
dharma
of others is perilous..."
The Gita teaches that man has a duty to promote
lokasangraha
or the stability, solidarity and progress of society. The activism of
the Gita is not of the common variety. It argues that action, as such,
is not detrimental to one's attainment of spiritual goals. It is only
one's attachment to the fruits of action that keeps one eternally in-
volved in the cycle of birth and death. The Gita teaches the art of
acting without being personally involved in the action. The teach-
ing of the
Bhagavad Gita
is summed up in the maxim: "Your
business is with the deed, and not with the result."
The Gita expounds the various methods of attaining union
(yoga)
with God. They are
jnana yoga
, the path of union through knowledge,
bhakti yoga,
the path of realisation through love and devotion and
karma yoga,
the path of union through work. A devotee (
bhakta)
who surrenders himself to the Divine compels God to become his
friend and guide. Krishna states that a true practitioner of the yoga
of action (
karmayogin
) also becomes a true devotee for by follow-
ing his own duty (
svadharma
), the Karmayogin is doing the will of
God. There is no hard and fast line between one way and another.
The Gita treats
yoga
which stands not only for the goal of spiritual
life but also for the way leading to it as one organic whole though
for purposes of exposition, it often isolates and dwells upon one
aspect of it to the exclusion of the others. The Gita achieves a
synthesis of various schools of religious thought and various ways
and means of spiritual life — such as
karma yoga, bhakti yoga
and
jnana yoga.
VEDANTA
Vedanta
became from the time of Shankaracharya (C. 788-820
A.D.) the dominant philosophy of India. Shankara, a Brahmin bom
in Kerala, became famous as the new interpreter of the
Vedanta
school and propagator of the monistic or non-dualistic
Advaita
("allowing no second" i.e. monism) school of
Vedanta.
Later inter-
pretations of the
Vedanta
were those of the Ramanuja school of
qualified nondualism (
Visistadvaita
) and of Madhwa who expounded
a more theistic and pluralistic
(Dvaita)
interpretation of
Vedanta.
The exact nature of the relation between the Supreme Being and
the individual soul is the central theme in these systems. In the
Vedanta Sutras
the sages Ashmarathya, Audulomi and Kashakritsna
hold different views on this question. The first held that the indi-
vidual souls like sparks issuing from a fire were neither different
from Brahman nor non-different from it. The second held that the
individual souls are different from the Supreme but ultimately become
one with the Supreme. The third held that it is the Supreme soul
that exists also as the individual soul. Shankara followed the third
view, that of Kashakritsna, and expounded the identity of the two,
of the individual soul as a state of the Supreme. Shankara main-
tained that the world we see round us is an illusion (
maya
), a dream,
a figment of the imagination. Ultimately, the only reality was
Brah-
man,
the impersonal World Soul of the
Upanishads
with which the
individual soul was identical.
Absolute nonduality, the absolute unity of the individual soul and
Brahman,
is basic to Shankara's philosophy. All plurality, the world
of thought and matter, is seen as unreal and as superimposed upon
the absolute unqualified
Brahman
which is one without a second.
When Shankara says that the world of thought and matter is not real,
he does not mean that it is non-existent. The world is and is not.
It is neither real nor unreal. This paradox simply recognises the
existence of what Shankara calls
maya.
Superimposition (
vivar-
tavada
) is inseparably linked with causality. Causal relation exists
in the world of multiplicity which is
maya. Maya,
like
Brahman,
is without beginning. Ignorance
(avidya)as
the cause and the appar-
ent world as the effect have always existed and will always exist.
Similarly, the individual soul, which appears different from other
souls and also from Brahman is in fact nothing but the one unitary
Brahman. Since ignorance lies at the root of the seeming duality,
knowledge alone is regarded as the means to liberation. Religious
activities and devotion have only a secondary function. They may
direct the mind to knowledge but in themselves can never bring about
liberation. Brahman may be regarded as possessing attributes of a
personalised God (
Iswara
). Devotion to Iswara purifies the mind and
prepares it for the higher knowledge of the unqualified Brahman.
Max Muller has said:
"Vedanta
holds a most unique position
among the philosophies of the world. After lifting the self or the
true nature of the Ego,
Vedanta
unites it with the essence of Divinity,
which is absolutely pure, perfect, immortal, unchangeable and one.
No philosopher, not even Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel or Schopen-
hauer, has reached that height of philosophic thought. None of our
philosophers, not excepting Heraclitus, Plato, Kant, or Hegel has
ventured to erect such a spire, never frightened by storms or light-
nings. Stone follows upon stone, in regular succession after once the
first step has been made, after once it has been clearly seen that in
the beginning there can have been but One, as there will be but One
in the end, whether we call it
Atman
or
Brahman
." He closed one
of his lectures on the
Vedanta
with these words: "In one half-verse
I shall tell you what has been taught in thousands of volumes:
Brahman
is true, the world is false, the soul is
Brahman
and nothing
else",
Ramanuja (C. 1017-1137) stressed devotion (
bhakti
) rather than
knowledge as the chief means of salvation and qualified Shankara's
non-dualism by declaring that the individual soul was one with God,
made by God out of his own essence but yet distinct. The sentient
and non-sentient universe constitute the body of the Supreme Being
whose chief attribute is intelligence. This latter conception of the