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XXI] Vanamāli Mišra
441 He regards sorrow as being due to attachment to things that are outside one's own self, and the opposite of it as happiness'. All actions performed with a view to securing any selfish end, all performance of actions prohibited by Vedic injunctions and nonperformance of duties rendered obligatory by Vedas produce sins. The opposite of this and all such actions as may please God are regarded as producing virtue. It is the power of God which is at the root of all virtue and vice which operates by veiling the qualities of God to us. This nescience (avidyā) is real and positive and different in different individuals. It produces the error or illusion which consists in regarding a thing as what it is not; and it is this false knowledge that is the cause of rebirthể. This avidyā is different with different individuals. It is through this avidyā that one gets attached to one's possession as “mine” and has also the false experience of individual freedom. In reality all one's actions are due to God, and when a person realizes this he ceases to have any attachment to anything and does not look forward for the fruits of his deeds. The avidyā produces the mind and its experiences of sorrows and pleasures; it also produces the false attachment by which the self regards the experiences as its its own nature as pure knowledge and bliss. Only the videhi-muktas enjoy this state; those in the state of jīvanmukti or sainthood enjoy it only to a partial extent. It is on account of attachments produced by ignorance that man is stirred to be led by the will of God. But as the ignorance is a true ignorance, so the experience of sorrow is also a true experience. All our rebirths are due to our actions performed against the mandates of the Vedas or for the fulfilment of our desires. The purity of the soul is attained by the realization of the idea that all our actions are induced by God and that the performer has no independence in anything. When a person feels that it is through false association with other things, and by considering oneself as the real independent agent that one gets into trouble, one naturally loses all interest in one's actions and experience of
i Sruti-siddhanta-sanugraha, 1. 9, 10, II.
2 prati-jīvam ribhinnä syāt satyā ca bhāva-rūpiņi | a-tasmims tad-dhiyo hetur nidānam jīva-samsytau. || Ibid. 1. 15.
3 atah kāmyam nişiddham ca duhkh-arījam tyajed budhaḥ. Sruti-siddhāntasamgraha, 1. 63. According to Vanamāli Misra at death a person goes to Heaven or to Hell according to his deeds and then after enjoying the fruits of his actions or suffering therefrom he is born as plants and then as lower animals, then as Yavanas or mlecchas and then in lower castes and finally as Brahmins.
· Śruti-siddh ribhinná . 1. 15; 1h-azijam tyajed ha person goef
