History of Indian Philosophy

SR No.: 007593
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Surendranath Dasgupta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Year: 1922
Total Pages: 2517
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 125 MB

Page 1866

50
The Bhāgavata-purāna [CH. XXIV there cannot be the same flame in two moments, or one flowing river in two different moments, so the body also is different in two different moments, though on account of our ignorance we suppose that the same body is passing through various stages and conditions. But in reality no one is born and no one dies through the agency of karma. It is all a panorama of illusions, just as the fire, as heat, exists eternally and yet appears to be burning in association with logs of wood. All the phenomena of birth, infancy, youth, old age and death as different stages of the body are but mere fancies. They are but stages of primal matter, the prakrti, which are regarded through illusion as different stages of our life. One notices the death of one's father and the birth of a son and so may speak of the destruction and generation of bodies, but no one experiences that the experiencer himself undergoes birth and death. The self thus is entirely different from the body. It is only through inability to distinguish properly between the two that one becomes attached to sense-objects and seems to pass through the cycle of birth and death. Just as a man seeing another man dance or sing imitates his action, so does the puruşa, which has no movement of itself, seet to imitate the qualities of buddhi in the operation of these movements. Again, just as when one looks at the images of trees in flowing water, the trees themselves seem to be many, so does the self regard itself as implicated in the movement of the prakrti. This gives us the world-experience and the experience of the cycles of birth and death, though none of them really exists. Thus we see that the Bhāgavata-purāņa agrees with the general Sāmkhya and the Vedānta view regarding birth and death. It no doubt accepts the ordinary view of the Upanişads that a man, like a caterpillar, does not leave one body without accepting another at the same time (Bhāgavata-purāna, X. 1. 38-44); but at the same time it holds that such birth and re-birth are due to one's own illusion or māyā.