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SAMAYASARA
culture. Associated with this doctrine of metempsychosis is the doctrine of Karma. Samsāra, the cycle of births and deaths is supposed to be the result of Karma--as a man soweth so doth he reap. Sarnsāra for the Upanişadic thinker meint a meaningles chain of births and deaths heralding a gloomy prospect. The summum bonum of life for the Upanisadic thinker therefore consisted in liberation from this chain. The very terin Mokşa implies "Deliverance", "Liberation.” Pessimistic aversion may be present with an inborn optimism of the future, the inherent evil of Sainsāra and the implied possibility of Moksa. These constitute the correlative doctrine to that of Brahman which together form the message of Upanişadic thought. All the latter Indian systems in spite of their mutual differences are permanently based upon these ideas. This fact stands as an evidence of the unity of their origin, i.e. all the Indian systems are born of the Upanişadic speculations.
The Upanişads and the Western thinkers--The first knowledge of the Upanişads gained by European scholars is an interesting historical fact. A Mogul prince, one of Shah Jehan's sons,, evidently influenced by Akbar's dream of universal religion attempted to bring about a union between Hinduism and Islam. With this purpose he translated the Upanişads into Persian for the benefit of his coreligionists. A copy of this Persian translation was presented to a French scholar who was interested in the study of Zoroastrianism. This French scholar translated the Upanişads from Persian to Latin. This Latin version fell into the hands of Schopenhauer, who by personal ternperament and philosophic tradition was eminently fit to appreciate the philosophy of the Upanişads. It was he who first popularised its study among German students. He himself used them as a Bible. "It has been the solace of my life and I hope it will be the same in my death." The Upanişads peculiarly appealed to the German students, because they themselves at the time of Schopenhauer were in possession of a philosophy quite analogous to this.
Deussen on the Upanişads.-Speaking of the concepts of the Upanişads in their relation to philosophy, Deussen wiites : "'The whole of religion and philosophy has its root in the thought that the universe is only appearance and not reality. This fact that philosophy has from the earliest times sought to determine a first principle of the universe proves that it started from a more or less clear consciousness that the entire empirical reality is not the true essence of things, that in Kant's words is only appearance and not the thing-in-itself. There have been three occasions on which philosophy has advanced in a clearer comprehension of its recurring task and of the solution demanded. First in India in the Upanişads, again in Greece in the philosophy of Parmenides and Plato and finally at a more recent time in
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