Madhava

“ Let, then, those who aspire to the highest end of personal souls be assured that the eternity of the body which we are setting forth is by no means a mere innovation. It has thus been said—
"What higher beatitude is there than a body undecaying, immortal,
"The repository of sciences, the root of merit, riches, pleasure, liberation?"
It is mercury alone that can make the body undecaying and immortal, as it is said—
"Only this supreme medicament can make the body undecaying and imperishable." ”

“ Not the mere knowledge, for then it would follow that the study of any system would be superfluous, inasmuch as without any institutional system one might, like the uninstructed, attain emancipation by the bare cognition that Mahádeva is the lord of the gods. Nor is presentation or intuition of the deity the cause of emancipation, for no intuition of the deity is competent to sentient creatures burdened with an accumulation of various impurities, and able to see only with the eyes of the flesh. ”

“ Thus we see that, like the authoritative treatises on medicine, the Yoga-śástra consists of four divisions; as those on medicine treat of disease, its cause, health, and medicine, so the Yoga-śástra also treats of phenomenal existence, its cause, liberation, and its cause. This existence of ours, full of pain, is what is to be escaped from; the connection of nature and the soul is the cause of our having to experience this existence; the absolute abolition of this connection is the escape ”

“ Difference (or duality between the Supreme Being and the universe) may also be inferred from cognisability and other marks. So also difference (or duality) may be understood from revelation, from texts setting out duality in emancipation and beatitude, such as: "All rejoice over truth attained; truthful, and celebrating the gift of the divine Indra, they recount his glory;" "Sarva, among those that know the truth, O Bráhman, is in the universe, true spirit; true is individual spirit; truth is duality, truth is duality, in me is illusion, in me illusion, in me illusion." ”

“ We reply that even although we grant that they are all-pervading, it is only where a given understanding has certain modifications in a given body, and certain objects are in a connection with that body, that the knowledge of these objects only, and none other, is produced to that understanding; and therefore, as this limitation is absolute, we hold that objects are just like magnets, and affect the understanding just as these do iron,—coming in contact with it through the channels of the senses. Therefore, the "modifications" belong to the understanding, not to the soul ”

“ That by knowledge of one thing there is knowledge of all things may be evinced from its supremacy and causality, not from the falsity of all things. For knowledge of the false cannot be brought about by knowledge of real existence. As we see the current assurance and expression that by knowing or not knowing its chief men a village is known or not known; and as when the father the cause is known, a man knows the son; (so by knowing the supreme and the cause, the inferior and the effect is known) . ”

“ If a man does not allow that inference is a form of evidence, pramáṇa, one may reply: You merely assert thus much, that inference is not a form of evidence: do you allege no proof of this, or do you allege any? ”

“ If you say that, "As difference and identity are mutually exclusive, we must have one or the other in the case of the soul, and its being equally both is absurd," we reply, that there is no evidence to support you when you characterise it as absurd. Only a valid non-perception [66] can thus preclude a suggestion as absurd; but this is not found in the present case, since (in the opinion of us, the advocates of the Syád-váda) it is perfectly notorious that all things present a mingled nature of many contradictory attributes. ”

“ Again, when you affirm that the dissentiency of others is known by the symbolism of words, you yourself allow induction by causality. When you deny the existence of any object on the ground of its not being perceived, you yourself admit an inference of which non-perception is the middle term. Conformably it has been said by Tathágata—
"The admission of a form of evidence in general results from its being present to the understanding of others. ”

“ Well, then (the Śáṅkaras may contend) , let the form of cognition evidentiary of illusion, which is under disputation, be inference, as follows:—Right knowledge must have had for its antecedent another entity (sc. illusion) , an entity different from mere prior non-existence of knowledge, which envelops the objects of knowledge, which is terminable by knowledge, which occupies the place of knowledge, inasmuch as it (the right knowledge) illuminates an object not before illuminated, like the light of a lamp springing up for the first time in the darkness. ”

“ We reply that as all those who maintain liberation in any form do include therein the absolute abolition of pain, our definition, as being thus a tenet accepted in all the schools, may well be called the royal highway [218] of philosophy. No one, in fact, maintains that pain is possible without the individual's activity. Thus even the Mádhyamika's opinion that "liberation consists in the abolition of soul," does not controvert our point, so far at any rate as that it is the abolition of pain. ”

“ This question is futile; for as a gem, the sun, and other luminous things, existing in the form of light, are substances in which light as a quality inheres—for light, as existing elsewhere than in its usual receptacle, and as being a mode of things though a substance, is still styled and accounted a quality derived from determination by that substance,—so this soul, while it exists as a self-luminous intelligence, has also intelligence as its quality. ”

“ For if you maintain that the knowledge acquired by perception has a certain form impressed upon it, you are met by the impossibility of explaining how a momentary perception can possess the power of impressing a form ”

“ It is while the soul is thus suffering, that, by the practice of the eight subservient means, forbearance, religious observance, &c., earnestly, uninterruptedly, and for a long period, and by continued resignation to the Supreme Being, at length there is produced an unclouded recognition of the distinction between the quality Goodness and the Soul; and the five "afflictions," ignorance, &c., are radically destroyed, and the various "stocks of desert," fortunate or unfortunate, are utterly abolished, and, the undefiled soul abiding emancipated, perfect Emancipation is accomplished. ”

“ Revelation, by censuring each when unaccompanied by the other, shows that it is knowledge together with works that is efficacious of emancipation, in the words: Blind darkness they enter who prefer illusion, and a greater darkness still do they enter who delight in knowledge only; knowledge and illusion, he who knows these both, he passing beyond death together with illusion, tastes immortality by knowledge. ”

“ Devotion is meditation on the Deity. When the vision of the visible world has been brought to a close by knowledge accumulated by the merit of such worship, the infinitely compassionate Supreme Spirit, tender to his votaries, bestows upon the votary devoted to his lord and absorbed in his lord, his own sphere infinite and endless, marked by consciousness [80] of being like him, from which there is no future return (to the sorrows of transmigratory existence) . ”

“ The evidence for the destruction of one kind of knowledge by another, and for the destruction of another knowledge by imagination, is to be found in the following argument; these knowledges themselves which are the subjects of the discussion are successively destroyed by the rise of others produced from them, because knowledge, like sound, is a special quality of an all-pervading substance, and of momentary duration. ”

“ As a potter's wheel, whirled by the stick and hands, moves on even after these have stopped, until the impulse is exhausted, so the previous repeated contemplations of the embodied soul for the attainment of moksha exert their influence even after they have ceased, and bear the soul onward to the end of the world ”

“ Govinda-bhagavat also says—
"Holding that the enjoyments of wealth and of the body are not permanent, one should strive
"After emancipation; but emancipation results from knowledge, knowledge from study, and study is only possible in a healthy body."
The body, some one may say, is seen to be perishable, how can its permanency be effected? Think not so, it is replied, for though the body, as a complexus of six sheaths or wrappers of the soul, is dissoluble, yet the body, as created by Hara and Gaurí under the names of mercury and mica, may be perdurable. ”

“ While merit, wealth, and enjoyment are transitory, emancipation is eternal; therefore a wise man should strive unceasingly to attain thereto. And emancipation is not won without the grace of Vishṇu, according to the text of the Náráyaṇa Upanishad: Through whose grace is the highest state, through whose essence he is liberated from transmigration, while inferior men propitiating the divinities are not emancipated; the supreme object of discernment to those who desire to be liberated from this snare of works. ”

“ But if you give up the view that 'liberation is the manifestation of happiness,' and then accept such a view as that which holds it to be only the cessation of pain, does not your conduct resemble that of the dyspeptic patient who refused sweet milk and preferred sour rice-gruel? ”

“ Of things which are not-soul, and which are objects of fruition (or experience of pleasure and pain) , unconsciousness, unconduciveness to the end of man, susceptibility of modification, and the like, are the properties. Of the Supreme Lord the attributes are subsistence, as the internal controller (or animator) of both the subjects and the objects of fruition; the boundless glory of illimitable knowledge, dominion, majesty, power, brightness, and the like, the countless multitude of auspicious qualities ”

“ Freedom from despondency is the contrary of dejection; the explication being, This soul is not attained by the faint-hearted. Satisfaction is the contentment which arises from the contrary of dejection; the explication being, Quiescent, self-subdued. ”

“ The verbal (or symbolical) world is the stream of cognitions conversant about words—the words "cow," and so forth. The impressional world is the miseries, as desire, aversion, &c., caused by the affectional world, the lesser miseries, as conceit, pride, &c., and merit and demerit.
Reflecting, therefore, that this universe is pain, an abode of pain, and an instrument of pain, a man should acquire a knowledge of the principles, the method of suppressing this pain. Hence it has been said—
"The principles sanctioned by Buddha are to the saint the four methods of suppressing the aggregate of pain." ”

“ Nature, as the thing to be experienced, depends on Soul the experiencer; and Soul looks to final bliss, as it seeks to throw off the three kinds of pain, which, though really apart from it, have fallen upon it by its coming under the shadow of intellect through not recognising its own distinction therefrom. [361] This final bliss [or absolute isolation] is produced by the discrimination of Nature and Soul, nor is this end possible without it; therefore Soul depends on Nature for its final bliss. ”

“ What is the principle here involved, pluralism or monism, or a universe both one and more than one? Of these alternatives monism is admitted in saying that Supreme Spirit alone subsists in all forms as all is its body; both unity and plurality are admitted in saying that one only Supreme Spirit subsists under a plurality of forms diverse as soul and not-soul; and plurality is admitted in saying [76] that the essential natures of soul, not-soul, and the Lord, are different, and not to be confounded. ”