Pravachanasara

SR No.: 003289
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A N Upadhye
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram
Publication Year: 1964
Total Pages: 612
Language: Hindi, Sanskrit
Classification: Book_Devnagari
File Size: 16 MB

Page 87

Pravacanasāra
The happiness of gods even is not self-established; simply to satisfy their physical itch they enjoy various pleasures; the enjoyment of these pleasures simply leads to further prolongation of embodied condition, their desire for sensory pleasures goes on increasing, and they are ever unsatisfied. The happiness derived through senses is dependent, amenable to disturbances, terminable and a cause of bondage and dangerous; so it should be completely eschewed. This should be thoroughly realized; attachment and aversion [p. 57:] towards various objects should be given up; the Suddhopayoga must be cultivated, so that miseries incidental to body would disappear (69-78). Delusion is a great hindrance to self-realization; he who knows Arahanta fully and in all the aspects, knows himself, and his delusion is evaporated. All the Arahantas have destroyed Karmas and attained liberation by being free from delusion, attachment and aversion, and by realising the pure self; and they have preached also to that effect (79-82).
Delusion consists in being infatuated with various objects; one is baffled therein developing attachment and aversion which give rise to various kinds of bondage which should be destroyed; the characteristics of delusion are: perverted apprehension, cruelty unto beings and indulging with the objects of senses. This delusion can be exhausted by understanding from the scriptures the objectivity constituted of substances, qualities and modifications; and then liberation is attained. The soul is constituted of knowledge, and other things are related with it only as substances: thus the self and non-self should be understood, if the self were to realise a delusionless state of itself; he is a true saint who understands thus; and he is called Dharma, as he is free from delusion, expert in scriptures and established in conduct free from attachment (83-92).
BOOK II
The object of knowledge is made up of substances, which by their very nature are existential entities, which are characterised by and endowed with various qualities and modifications, and which are all the while coupled with origination, destruction and permanence without leaving their existential nature (1. 3-5); though established as an existential entity, the substance undergoes conditions of permanence, origination and destruction which are simultaneous (7-8); they take place in modifications which are possible in a substance; and hence substance is a base for all of them that are collocated therein (9-10). One modification rises and the other vanishes, but the substance is the same; the substance develops some other quality leaving the one: so both modes and qualities constitute the substance, which is ever selfexistent (11-3). The relation between substance, quality and modification, is that of non-identity (anyatva); they are not separate, because they have no separate space-points (pravibhakta-pradesa); so they cannot be present elsewhere than in a substance (14-8).
The substance which forever retains its position can be affirmed and denied, with respect to its existence, according as it is viewed from the view-point of substance or that of modification. So far as the substance is concerned there is always non-difference, but there is difference in view of the modification which pervades the substance for the time being (19, 22). According to some modification or other it is