Part 53 (2/2)

So here, we have to consider the concomitance of ”order and arrangement” in general with ”the existence of a creator,” and thus though the order and arrangement of the world may be different from the order and arrangement of things produced by man, yet an inference from it for the existence of a creator would not be inadmissible. The objection that even now we see many effects (e.g. trees) which are daily shooting forth from the ground without any creator being found to produce them, does not hold, for it can never be proved that the plants are not actually created by a creator. The inference therefore stands that the world has a creator, since it is an effect and has order and arrangement in its construction. Everything that is an effect and has an order and arrangement has a creator, like the jug. The world is an effect and has order and arrangement and has therefore a creator.

Just as the potter knows all the purposes of the jug that he makes,

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so is'vara knows all the purposes of this wide universe and is thus omniscient. He knows all things always and therefore does not require memory; all things are perceived by him directly without any intervention of any internal sense such as manas, etc. He is always happy. His will is eternal, and in accordance with the karma of men the same will produces dissolution, creates, or protects the world, in the order by which each man reaps the results of his own deeds. As our self which is in itself bodiless can by its will produce changes in our body and through it in the external world, so is'vara also can by his will create the universe though he has no body. Some, however, say that if any a.s.sociation of body with is'vara is indispensable for our conception of him, the atoms may as well be regarded as his body, so that just as by the will of our self changes and movement of our body take place, so also by his will changes and movements are produced in the atoms [Footnote ref l].

The naiyayikas in common with most other systems of Indian philosophy believed that the world was full of sorrow and that the small bits of pleasure only served to intensify the force of sorrow. To a wise person therefore everything is sorrow ([email protected] [email protected]@m [email protected]_); the wise therefore is never attached to the so-called pleasures of life which only lead us to further sorrows.

The bondage of the world is due to false knowledge (_mithyajnana_) which consists in thinking as my own self that which is not my self, namely body, senses, manas, feelings and knowledge; when once the true knowledge of the six padarthas and as Nyaya says, of the proofs ([email protected]_), the objects of knowledge (_prameya_), and of the other logical categories of inference is attained, false knowledge is destroyed. False knowledge can be removed by constant thinking of its opposite ([email protected]_), namely the true estimates of things. Thus when any pleasure attracts us, we are to think that this is in reality but pain, and thus the right knowledge about it will dawn and it will never attract us again. Thus it is that with the destruction of false knowledge our attachment or antipathy to things and ignorance about them (collectively called [email protected], cf. the kles'a of Patanjali) are also destroyed.

With the destruction of attachment actions ([email protected]_) for the

[Footnote:1: See _Nyayamanjari_, pp. 190-204,_ is'varanumana_ of Raghunatha [email protected]@ni and Udayana's _Kusumanjali_.]

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fulfilment of desires cease and with it rebirth ceases and with it sorrow ceases. Without false knowledge and attachment, actions cannot produce the bondage of karma that leads to the production of body and its experiences. With the cessation of sorrow there is emanc.i.p.ation in which the self is divested of all its qualities (consciousness, feeling, willing, etc.) and remains in its own inert state. The state of mukti according to [email protected] is neither a state of pure knowledge nor of bliss but a state of perfect qualitilessness, in which the self remains in itself in its own purity. It is the negative state of absolute painlessness in mukti that is sometimes spoken of as being a state of absolute happiness (_ananda_), though really speaking the state of mukti can never be a state of happiness. It is a pa.s.sive state of self in its original and natural purity una.s.sociated with pleasure, pain, knowledge, willing, etc. [Footnote ref 1].

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[Footnote 1: _Nyayamanjari_, pp. 499-533.]

CHAPTER IX

[email protected] PHILOSOPHY [Footnote ref 1]

A Comparative Review.

The [email protected] philosophy looked at experience from a purely common sense point of view and did not work with any such monistic tendency that the ultimate conceptions of our common sense experience should be considered as coming out of an original universal (e.g. [email protected] of the [email protected]). s.p.a.ce, time, the four elements, soul, etc. convey the impression that they are substantive ent.i.ties or substances. What is perceived of the material things as qualities such as colour, taste, etc. is regarded as so many ent.i.ties which have distinct and separate existence but which manifest themselves in connection with the substances. So also karma or action is supposed to be a separate ent.i.ty, and even the cla.s.s notions are perceived as separate ent.i.ties inhering in substances. Knowledge (_jnana_) which illuminates all things is regarded only as a quality belonging to soul, just as there are other qualities of material objects. Causation is viewed merely as the collocation of conditions. The genesis of knowledge is also viewed as similar in nature to the production of any other physical event. Thus just as by the collocation of certain physical circ.u.mstances a jug and its qualities are produced, so by the combination and respective contacts of the soul, mind, sense, and the objects of sense, knowledge (_jnana_) is produced. Soul with Nyaya is an inert unconscious ent.i.ty in which knowledge, etc.

inhere. The relation between a substance and its quality, action, cla.s.s notion, etc. has also to be admitted as a separate ent.i.ty, as without it the different ent.i.ties being without any principle of relation would naturally fail to give us a philosophic construction.

[email protected] had conceived of a principle which consisted of an infinite number of reals of three different types, which by their combination were conceived to be able to produce all substances, qualities, actions, etc. No difference was acknowledged to exist between substances, qualities and actions, and it was conceived

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[Footnote 1: On the meanirg of the word [email protected] see Chapter IV.]

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that these were but so many aspects of a combination of the three types of reals in different proportions. The reals contained within them the rudiments of all developments of matter, knowledge, willing, feelings, etc. As combinations of reals changed incessantly and new phenomena of matter and mind were manifested, collocations did not bring about any new thing but brought about a phenomenon which was already there in its causes in another form. What we call knowledge or thought ordinarily, is with them merely a form of subtle illuminating matter stuff. [email protected] holds however that there is a transcendent ent.i.ty as pure consciousness and that by some kind of transcendent reflection or contact this pure consciousness transforms the bare translucent thought-matter into conscious thought or experience of a person.

But this hypothesis of a pure self, as essentially distinct and separate from knowledge as ordinarily understood, can hardly be demonstrated in our common sense experience; and this has been pointed out by the Nyaya school in a very strong and emphatic manner. Even [email protected] did not try to prove that the existence of its transcendent [email protected] could be demonstrated in experience, and it had to attempt to support its hypothesis of the existence of a transcendent self on the ground of the need of a permanent ent.i.ty as a fixed object, to which the pa.s.sing states of knowledge could cling, and on grounds of moral struggle towards virtue and emanc.i.p.ation. [email protected] had first supposed knowledge to be merely a combination of changing reals, and then had as a matter of necessity to admit a fixed principle as [email protected] (pure transcendent consciousness). The self is thus here in some sense an object of inference to fill up the gap left by the inadequate a.n.a.lysis of consciousness (_buddhi_) as being non-intelligent and incessantly changing.

Nyaya fared no better, for it also had to demonstrate self on the ground that since knowledge existed it was a quality, and therefore must inhere in some substance. This hypothesis is again based upon another uncritical a.s.sumption that substances and attributes were entirely separate, and that it was the nature of the latter to inhere in the former, and also that knowledge was a quality requiring (similarly with other attributes) a substance in which to inhere. None of them could take their stand upon the self-conscious nature of our ordinary thought and draw their conclusions on the strength of the direct evidence of this self-conscious

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