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 564

The Sankara School of Vedānta [CH. Their main point seems to consist in a dogmatic statement that all appearances or experiences are false just as dream experiences are false. The imperfect analogy of waking experiences is made into an argument, and the entire manifold of appearances is declared to be false. But it is urged at the same time that these false creations must have some basis of truth; the changing appearances must have some unchanging basis on which they are imposed—and this basis is the self (ātman), or Brahman, which is the only thing that is permanent, unchanging and real. This self is the being of pure intelligence, which is one identical unit, negating all differences and duality (višuddha-vijñapti-mātra-sattādvaya-rūpeņa). Just as the false creation of "snake" appears in the case of the "rope," so all such judgments as “I am happy," "I am unhappy," "I am ignorant," "I am born,” “I am old,” “I am with a body," "I perceive," etc., are all merely false predications associated with the self; they are all false, changing and illusory predications, and it is only the self which remains permanent through all such judgments. The self is entirely different from all such predications; it is self-luminous and self-manifesting, shining independently by itself.
By applying the dialectic of mutual interdependence, pratītyasamutpāda, Nāgārjuna tried to prove that there was nothing which could be pointed out as the essence of anything as it is; but he did not explain how the appearances which were nothing more than phantom creations came to be what they were. How did the world-appearance of essenceless interdependent phenomena show itself? Sankara did not try to prove with a keen logical dialectic that the world-appearance was false: he simply took it for granted, since the Upanişads proclaimed Brahman as the ultimate reality. But how did the world-appearance manifest itself? Sankara does not seem to go deeply into this question and simply passes it over in asserting that this world-appearance is all due to ignorance (avidyā); it could not be spoken of as either existing or non-existing; it was merely illusory, like the conch-shell silver. But Padmapada, who wrote the commentary known as Pañca-pādikā on the first four sūtras of Sankara's commentary on the Brahmasūtras, says that the precise meaning of the term “false conception" (mithyā-jñāna) in Sankara's introduction to his commentary on the Brahma-sūtras is that there is a force or power or potency (sakti) of
i Gaudapāda's Kārikā, 11. 17.