Yoga as philosophy and religion

by Surendranath Dasgupta

We have seen that the karmāśaya has three fructifications, viz. jāti, āyush and bhoga. Now generally the karmāśaya is regarded as ekabhavika or unigenital, i.e. it accumulates in one life. Ekabhava means one life and ekabhavika means the product of one life, or accumulated in one life. Regarded from this point of view, it may be contrasted with the vāsanās which remain accumulated from thousands of previous lives since eternity, the mind, being pervaded all over with them, as a fishing-net is covered all over with knots. This vāsanā results from memory of the experiences of a life generated by the fructification of the karmāśaya and kept in the citta in the form of potency or impressions (saṃskāra). Now we have previously seen that the citta remains constant in all the births and rebirths that an individual has undergone from eternity; it therefore keeps the memory of those various experiences of thousands of lives in the form of saṃskāra or potency and is therefore compared with a fishing-net pervaded all over with knots. The vāsanās therefore are not the results of the accumulation of experiences or their memory in one life but in many lives, and are therefore called anekabhavika as contrasted with the karmāśaya representing virtuous and vicious actions which are accumulated in one life and which produce another life, its experiences and its life-duration as a result of fructification (vipāka). This vāsanā is the cause of the instinctive tendencies, or habits of deriving pleasures and pains peculiar to different animal lives.

Thus the habits of a dog-life and its peculiar modes of taking its experiences and of deriving pleasures and pains are very different in nature from those of a man-life; they must therefore be explained on the basis of an incipient memory in the form of potency, or impressions (saṃskāra) of the experiences that an individual must have undergone in a previous dog-life.

Now when by the fructification of the karmāśaya a dog-life is settled for a person, his corresponding vāsanās of a previous dog-life are at once revived and he begins to take interest in his dog-life in the manner of a dog; the same principle applies to the virtue of individuals as men or as gods (IV. 8).

If there was not this law of vāsanās, then any vāsanā would be revived in any life, and with the manifestation of the vāsanā of animal life a man would take interest in eating grass and derive pleasure from it. Thus Nāgeśa says: “Now if those karmas which produce a man-life should manifest the vāsanās of animal lives, then one might be inclined to eat grass as a man, and it is therefore said that only the vāsanās corresponding to the karmas are revived.”

Now as the vāsanās are of the nature of saṃskāras or impressions, they lie ingrained in the citta and nothing can prevent their being revived. The intervention of other births has no effect. For this reason, the vāsanās of a dog-life are at once revived in another dog-life, though between the first dog-life and the second dog-life, the individual may have passed through many other lives, as a man, a bull, etc., though the second dog-life may take place many hundreds of years after the first dog-life and in quite different countries. The difference between saṃskāras, impressions, and smṛti or memory is simply this that the former is the latent state whereas the latter is the manifested state; so we see that the memory and the impressions are identical in nature, so that whenever a saṃskāra is revived, it means nothing but the manifestation of the memory of the same experiences conserved in the saṃskāra in a latent state. Experiences, when they take place, keep their impressions in the mind, though thousands of other experiences, lapse of time, etc., may intervene. They are revived in one moment with the proper cause of their revival, and the other intervening experiences can in no way hinder this revival. So it is with the vāsanās, which are revived at once according to the particular fructification of the karmāśaya, in the form of a particular life, as a man, a dog, or anything else.

It is now clear that the karmāśaya tending towards fructification is the cause of the manifestation of the vāsanās already existing in the mind in a latent form. Thus the Sūtra says:—“When two similar lives are separated by many births, long lapses of time and remoteness of space, even then for the purpose of the revival of the vāsanās, they may be regarded as immediately following each other, for the memories and impressions are the same” (Yoga-sūtra, IV. 9). The Bhāshya says: “the vāsanā is like the memory (smṛti), and so there can be memory from the impressions of past lives separated by many lives and by remote tracts of country. From these memories the impressions (saṃskāras) are derived, and the memories are revived by manifestation of the karmāśayas, and though memories from past impressions may have many lives intervening, these interventions do not destroy the causal antecedence of those past lives” (IV. 9).

These vāsanās are, however, beginningless, for a baby just after birth is seen to feel the fear of death instinctively, and it could not have derived it from its experience in this life. Again, if a small baby is thrown upwards, it is seen to shake and cry like a grown-up man, and from this it may be inferred that it is afraid of falling down on the ground and is therefore shaking through fear. Now this baby has never learnt in this life from experience that a fall on the ground will cause pain, for it has never fallen on the ground and suffered pain therefrom; so the cause of this fear cannot be sought in the experiences of this life, but in the memory of past experiences of fall and pain arising therefrom, which is innate in this life as vāsanā and causes this instinctive fear. So this innate memory which causes instinctive fear of death from the very time of birth, has not its origin in this life but is the memory of the experience of some previous life, and in that life, too, it existed as innate memory of some other previous life, and in that again as the innate memory of some other life and so on to beginningless time. This goes to show that the vāsanās are without beginning.

We come now to the question of unigenitality—ekabhavikatva—of the karmāśaya and its exceptions. We find that great confusion has occurred among the commentators about the following passage in the Bhāshya which refers to this subject: The Bhāshya according to Vācaspati in II. 13 reads: tatra dṛshṭajanmavedanīyasya niyatavipākasya, etc. Here Bhikshu and Nāgeśa read tatrādṛshṭajanmavedanīyasya niyatavipākasya, etc. There is thus a divergence of meaning on this point between Yoga-vārttika and his follower Nāgeśa, on one side, and Vācaspati on the other.

Vācaspati says that the dṛshṭajanmavedanīya (to be fructified in the same visible life) karma is the only true karma where the karmāśaya is ekabhavika, unigenital, for here these effects are positively not due to the karma of any other previous lives, but to the karma of that very life. Thus these are the only true causes of ekabhavika karmāśaya.

Thus according to Vācaspati we see that the adṛshṭajanmavedanīya karma (to be fructified in another life) of unappointed fruition is never an ideal of ekabhavikatva or unigenital character; for it may have three different courses: (1) It may be destroyed without fruition. (2) It may become merged in the ruling action. (3) It may exist for a long time overpowered by the ruling action whose fruition has been appointed.