tman_and_moksa

SR No.: 020053
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: G N Joshi
Publisher: Gujarat University
Publication Year: 1965
Total Pages: 901
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 12 MB

Page 492

Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
460
Atman and Mokpa
afflictions and it would thus lose its purity and eternal bliss. As Slamkara says if being an agent belongs to the soul's nature, it can never free itself from it no more can fire divest itself of heat, and as long as man has not freed himself from activity, he cannot obtain his highest end, since activity is essentially painful. Scripture says that liberation results from the instruction about the eternally pure, intelligent, free self. The soul cannot remain eternally pure and free if agentship becomes a part of its essential nature. Samkara, — therefore, --holds that the soul appears to be an agent because the attributes of agentship which are adjuncts are superimposed upon it; it does not form part of its proper nature. The soul is partless; it does not possess limbs and without limbs and instruments action is impossible as in the case of a carpenter.
Just as the soul is not an agent or doer of actions, similarly it is not also the enjoyer (bhoktr) of the results of actions. Enjoyership of actions does not belong to the soul for the soul possesses no sense organs to enjoy the things or the fruits of actions. As it is not the doer it cannot be the enjoyer also. The soul is supposed to possess qualities like desire, aversion, pleasure, pain, etc. .... which form the essential characteristics of the soul on
S'amkara (Com.) on Vedanta Sūtras (Tr. Thibaut), 2. 3. 40, Vol. II, p. 53.
न स्वाभाविकं कर्तृत्वं आत्मनः संभवति, अनिर्मोक्षप्रसंगात्......तस्मात् उपाधिधर्माध्यासेन एव आत्मनः कर्तृत्वं न स्वाभाविकम् ।
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