Indian Philosophy

Author(s): Nagin J Shah
Publisher: Sanskrit Sanskriti Granthmala

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the Sanskrit commentators and modern exponents. And it has been cogently * demonstrated that for Patañjali, Gautama and Vātsyāyana Isvara is nothing but a jivanmukta who is a spiritual teacher (guru) or preacher (upadestā) par excellence.
The sixth essay deals with the problem of jñāna-darśana. One meaning of the term 'darśana' is sraddhā. Another meaning of this term is a special type of cognition. It is this meaning that is intended when the terms 'jñāna' and darśana' are used side by side. Jñāna is a type of cognition and darsana is also a type of cognition. So naturally there arises a question as to what distinction between these two types of cognition is. To find answer to this question, the Sārkhya-Yoga, Buddhist and Jaina views on the problem of jñāna-darśana are extensively and closely studied. That jñāna and darśana are two fundamentally different faculties is accepted by the thinkers belonging to these three traditions. The Sārkhya-Yoga thinkers recognised two fundamentally different tattvas, viz. purusa (=ātman) and citta. They attributed the faculty of darsana to purusa alone and the faculty of jñāna to citta alone. The Buddhists rejected purusa (=ātman) altogether and attributed the faculty of darsana to citta. Thus, the citta recognised by the Buddhists possesses both the faculties, viz. darśana and jñāna. Those very reasons that urged the Buddhists to reject ātman urged Jainas also to reject it. Jainas rejected ātman, accepting citta alone. They too attributed both the faculties to citta. Great pains have been taken to bring out clearly the distinction between jñāna and darśana.
The seventh essay critically expounds Buddhist logician Dharmakirti's theory of knowledge. The metaphysics of momentarism could not but reject 'the validity of every cognition that grasps spatial and temporal extension and consequently in that metaphysics can fit only the theory that nothing but pure sensation gives us true knowledge of reality. So; for the Buddhist perception is equivalent to pure sensation which is by nature free from any thought. Thus, the most conspicuous and crucial feature of Dharmakirti's logic is the sharp distinction drawn between sensory experience and thought. Dharmakirti assigns an essentially negative rather than positive function to thought; in his eyes, thought is primarily meant to remove an illusion and only incidentally to produce a conviction. However here another line of thought has also been operative. For what thought reveals about an object is what is common to several objects; but Dharmakirti is of the view that each object has just got one positive nature which it does not share with any other; so according to him what several objects have in common is not any positive feature but just that feature which excludes them from a particular set of objects (i.e. what jars have in common is what excludes them from non-jars). In this way Dharmakirti also feels justified in maintaining that bare sensory experience reveals the total nature of an object while a piece of thought concerning it reveals only an aspect of this nature. For sensory experience reveals an object as a bare particular,