The naiyâyikas 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 (sarva@m du@hkha@m vivekina@h); 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 (mithyâjñâna) 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 padârthas and as Nyâya says, of the proofs (pramâ@na), 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 (pratipak@sabhâvanâ), 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 do@sa, cf. the kles'a of Patañjali) are also destroyed.
With the destruction of attachment actions (prav@rtti) for the
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[Footnote:1: See Nyâyamañjarî, pp. 190-204, Îs'varânumâna of Raghunâtha
S'iro@ma@ni and Udayana's Kusumâñjalî.]
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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 emancipation 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 Nyâya-Vais'e@sika 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 (ânanda), though really speaking the state of mukti can never be a state of happiness. It is a passive state of self in its original and natural purity unassociated with pleasure, pain, knowledge, willing, etc. [Footnote ref 1].
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[Footnote 1: Nyâyamañjarî, pp. 499-533.]