Yoga as philosophy and religion

by Surendranath Dasgupta

Vijñāna Bhikshu and his follower Nāgeśa, however, say that the dṛshṭajanmavedanīya karma (to be fructified in the same visible life) can never be ekabhavika or unigenital for there is no bhava, or previous birth there, whose product is being fructified in that life, for this karma is of that same visible life and not of some other previous bhava or life; and they agree in holding that it is for that reason that the Bhāshya makes no mention of this dṛshṭajanmavedanīya karma; it is clear that the karmāśaya in no other bhava is being fructified here. Thus we see that about dṛshṭajanmavedanīya karma, Vācaspati holds that it is the typical case of ekabhavika karma (karma of the same birth), whereas Vijñāna Bhikshu holds just the opposite view, viz. that the dṛhṭajanmavedanīya karma should by no means be considered as ekabhavika since there is here no bhava or birth, it being fructified in the same life.

The adṛshṭajanmavedanīya karma (works to be fructified in another life) of unfixed fruition has three different courses: (I) As we have observed before, by the rise of aśuklākṛshṇa (neither black nor white) karma, the other karmas—śukla (black), kṛshṇa (white) and śuklakṛshṇa (both black and white)—are rooted out. The śukla karmāśaya again arising from study and asceticism destroys the kṛshṇa karmas without their being able to generate their effects. These therefore can never be styled ekabhavika, since they are destroyed without producing any effect. (II) When the effects of minor actions are merged in the effects of the major and ruling action. The sins originating from the sacrifice of animals at a holy sacrifice are sure to produce bad effects, though they may be minor and small in comparison with the good effects arising from the performance of the sacrifice in which they are merged. Thus it is said that the experts being immersed in floods of happiness brought about by their sacrifices bear gladly particles of the fire of sorrow brought about by the sin of killing animals at sacrifice. So we see that here also the minor actions having been performed with the major do not produce their effects independently, and so all their effects are not fully manifested, and hence these secondary karmāśayas cannot be regarded as ekabhavika. (III) Again the adṛshṭajanmavedanīya karma (to be fructified in another life) of unfixed fruition (aniyata vipāka) remains overcome for a long time by another adṛshṭajanmavedanīya karma of fixed fruition. A man may for example do some good actions and some extremely vicious ones, so that at the time of death, the karmāśaya of those vicious actions becoming ripe and fit for appointed fruition, generates an animal life. His good action, whose benefits are such as may be reaped only in a man-life, will remain overcome until the man is born again as a man: so this also cannot be said to be ekabhavika (to be reaped in one life). We may summarise the classification of karmas according to Vācaspati in a table as follows:—

Thus the karmāśaya may be viewed from two sides, one being that of fixed fruition and the other unfixed fruition, and the other that of dṛshṭajanmavedanīya and adṛshṭajanmavedanīya. Now the theory is that the niyatavipāka (of fixed fruition) karmāśaya is always ekabhavika, i.e. it does not remain separated by other lives, but directly produces its effects in the succeeding life.

Ekabhavika means that which is produced from the accumulation of karmas in one life in the life which succeeds it. Vācaspati, however, takes it also to mean that action which attains fruition in the same life in which it is performed, whereas what Vijñāna Bhikshu understands by ekabhavika is that action alone which is produced in the life immediately succeeding the life in which it was accumulated. So according to Vijñāna Bhikshu, the niyata vipāka (of fixed fruition) dṛshṭajanmavedanīya (to be fructified in the same life) action is not ekabhavika, since it has no bhava, i.e. it is not the production of a preceding life. Neither can it be anekabhavika; thus this niyatavipākadṛshṭajanmavedanīya action is neither ekabhavika nor anekbhavika. Whereas Vācaspati is inclined to call this also ekabhavika. About the niyatavipāka-adṛshṭajanmavedanīya action being called ekabhavika (unigenital) there seems to be no dispute. The aniyatavipāka-adṛshṭajanmavedanīya action cannot be called ekabhavika as it undergoes three different courses described above.

CHAPTER X
THE ETHICAL PROBLEM

We have described avidyā and its special forms as the kleśas, from which also proceed the actions virtuous and vicious, which in their turn again produce as a result of their fruition, birth, life and experiences of pleasure and pain and the vāsanās or residues of the memory of these experiences. Again every new life or birth is produced from the fructification of actions of a previous life; a man is made to perform actions good or bad by the kleśas which are rooted in him, and these actions, as a result of their fructification, produce another life and its experiences, in which life again new actions are earned by virtue of the kleśas, and thus the cycle is continued. When there is pralaya or involution of the cosmical world-process the individual cittas of the separate purushas return back to the prakṛti and lie within it, together with their own avidyās, and at the time of each new creation or evolution these are created anew with such changes as are due according to their individual avidyās, with which they had to return back to their original cause, the prakṛti, and spend an indivisible inseparable existence with it. The avidyās of some other creation, being merged in the prakṛti along with the cittas, remain in the prakṛti as vāsanās, and prakṛti being under the influence of these avidyās as vāsanās creates as modifications of itself the corresponding minds for the individual purushas, connected with them before the last pralaya dissolution. So we see that though the cittas had returned to their original causes with their individual nescience (avidyā), the avidyā was not lost but was revived at the time of the new creation and created such minds as should be suitable receptacles for it. These minds (buddhi) are found to be modified further into their specific cittas or mental planes by the same avidyā which is manifested in them as the kleśas, and these again in the karmāśaya, jāti, āyush and bhoga, and so on; the individual, however, is just in the same position as he was or would have been before the involution of pralaya. The avidyās of the cittas which had returned to the prakṛti at the time of the creation being revived, create their own buddhis of the previous creation, and by their connection with the individual purushas are the causes of the saṃsāra or cosmic evolution—the evolution of the microcosm, the cittas, and the macrocosm or the exterior world.

In this new creation, the creative agencies of God and avidyā are thus distinguished in that the latter represents the end or purpose of the prakṛti—the ever-evolving energy transforming itself into its modifications as the mental and the material world; whereas the former represents that intelligent power which abides outside the pale of prakṛti, but removes obstructions offered by the prakṛti. Though unintelligent and not knowing how and where to yield so as to form the actual modifications necessary for the realisation of the particular and specific objects of the numberless purushas, these avidyās hold within themselves the serviceability of the purushas, and are the cause of the connection of the purusha and the prakṛti, so that when these avidyās are rooted out it is said that the purushārthatā or serviceability of the purusha is at an end and the purusha becomes liberated from the bonds of prakṛti, and this is called the final goal of the purusha.

The ethical problem of the Pātañjala philosophy is the uprooting of this avidyā by the attainment of true knowledge of the nature of the purusha, which will be succeeded by the liberation of the purusha and his absolute freedom or independence—kaivalya—the last realisation of the purusha—the ultimate goal of all the movements of the prakṛti.

This final uprooting of the avidyā with its vāsanās directly follows the attainment of true knowledge called prajñā, in which state the seed of false knowledge is altogether burnt and cannot be revived again. Before this state, the discriminative knowledge which arises as the recognition of the distinct natures of purusha and buddhi remains shaky; but when by continual practice this discriminative knowledge becomes strengthened in the mind, its potency gradually grows stronger and stronger, and roots out the potency of the ordinary states of mental activity, and thus the seed of false knowledge becomes burnt up and incapable of fruition, and the impurity of the energy of rajas being removed, the sattva as the manifesting entity becomes of the highest purity, and in that state flows on the stream of the notion of discrimination—the recognition of the distinct natures of purusha and buddhi—free from impurity. Thus when the state of buddhi becomes almost as pure as the purusha itself, all self-enquiry subsides, the vision of the real form of the purusha arises, and false knowledge, together with the kleśas and the consequent fruition of actions, ceases once for all. This is that state of citta which, far from tending towards the objective world, tends towards the kaivalya of the purusha.