Indian Philosophy

Author(s): Sukhlal Sanghavi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 98

90 The Sankhya, Jaina and Buddhist Views Regarding God The Sankhya, Jaina and Buddhist Views Regarding God
But totally different from all this is the case with the Sankhya traditi. on positing twenty-five elements, the Jaina tradition and the Buddhist tradition. All these three posit along with heaven etc, emancipation as well and treat the latter itself as the chief aim of human endeavour. Even then, they attribute no role whatsoever to God either in the task of attaining emancipation or in that of attainig any other desired fruit. All these three traditions are a believer in the efficacy of human endeavour. They do posit element like faith, fate and unforeseen destiny, but according to them all these become useful only when functiong under the supervision of human endeavour. These traditions are of the view that a soul is itself possessed of such a capacity that it can create for itself whatever type of future it likes. Just as it works under the influence of an impress of ignorance or affliction similarly by dint of its own endeavour it attains the highest limit of knowledge and undeludedness. As soon as the endea. vour on its part assumes an upward (progressive) direction the elements
te faith, fate and unforeseen destiny inherent in it become helpful in its progress in that very direction. Hence in these traditions souls are considered to be so much independent that they stand in no need of favour bestowed on them by an element standing besides them in the form of a world-creator.
Among these three traditions themselves there obtains an important difference of opinion which too is worthy of note. Thus the Sänkhya trad. ition of course advocates the efficacy of endeavour but there is in it no scope whatsoever for endeavour on the part of a soul or conscious element; for according to it, all endeavour pertains to prakrti or the non-conscious element. Thus it is prakrti which acts in relation to the world as a material-cause on the one hand and an efficient-cause as also a controller on the other. It undertakes its entire operation for the sake of a twofold enjoyment on the part of the conscious element which is something eternal-undergoing-nu-change. Thus praksti brings about for the sake of soul two types of enjoyment-viz. that of the form of a sense-born cognition and that of the form of a discriminatory knowledge. Really, these enjoyments too pertain to prakrti itself; for so far as a soul is concerned they are only imputed to it. Thus in the Sānkhya tradition actorship as also world-creatorship and world-destroyership are attributed to the element prakrti in so absolute a fashion that on account thereof just as there is no actorship or enjoyership belonging to the conscious element even if its existence in the form of some. thing eternal-undergoing-no-change is of course posited similarly there is here no scope even for positing the existence of the element God - to say nothing of positing world-creatorship on its part. However, there have been thinkers who are of the view that the Sankhya tradition does not altogethe er deny the existence of the element God - its only contention being that in