________________
18
GENERAL SURVEY
realization is attained in samadhi which means the merging of the mind in the Reality or Self, with body and thought controlled. Samadhi is to be attained by practising certain rules laid down in works on yoga.
This is Hindu Monism or rigid Idealism of the nondual Vedanta. Apart from this, there are two other systems also known as Vedanta. They differ from the monistic school in so far as they admit, though with many limitations and qualifications, the existence of a world and individual souls besides Brahman. Inconsistent as it seems, all these schools of Vedanta subs. cribe to the doctrine of transmigration which is to be terminated on the realisation of the Self.
Vedanta is essentially an Indian, or, to be more exact, a purely Hindu form of belief, but it seems to have influenced non-Hindu thought outside India in one instance at least. For Muslim Sufe-ism is practically a copy of the Vedanta with slight variations which cannot be closely looked into here for want of time.
The Sankhyan school of Hindu metaphysics, founded by Kapila, starts by positing two eternal realities, purushar and prakriti. The purusha is merely a spectator and is separate from the spectacle, Prakriti is the equival. ent of nature, conceived, in an abstract way, as being characterised by intelligence (sattva), motion (rajas) and rest (tamas). All that is changing and shifting, all that is impermanent and transient, all that is produced from reflection, as also all that is concerned in the process of
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
