Samayasara

Author(s): Kundkundacharya, Hiralal Jain, A N Upadhye
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 81

SAMAYASARA
In man there is a predominance of Rajoguna. Hence arises the feverish activity of man who is destined to eat the fruits of his karmas, His life is marked by the dominant note of struggle the misery and the few cases of momentary happiness which he now and then manages to experience only go to accentuate his general unhappiness and misery. The last is the region of the animals. This has the maximum of Tamoguņa or darkness. Hence all the inhabitants of this region are marked by general unconsciousness and stupor. All these there regions of the world constitute the one whole world of samsāric cycle according to Kapila. The same chain of births and deaths binds the three kinds of beings animals, men and Devas. Even the prominent residents of Svarga, Brahma and Indra who generally enjoy unalloyed happiness throughout their lives have to meet with death. Hence their life is equally subject to the visicitudes of Samsāra and suffers from the bondage of births and deaths. Theirs is not the life of pure and liberated Purușa. Thus not only in the building up of the inorganic world but also in the evolution of the organic including the super and subhuman regions, the part palyed by the three guņas of Praksti is felt in no mean degree. These guņas are invoked by the Samkhya thinkers to explain the birth of world and the process of Saṁsāra.
Mokşa or liberation : According to Samkhyas Moksa or liberation consists in getting rid of all the root causes of Saṁsāra which are the three kinds of bondage, mentioned above. Kapila curiously expects the means of salvation from the very Prakrti which is the original source of the bondage. The intelligent Puruşa is inactive by nature and hence is incapable of being the architect of his own destiny. Acetana—the unenlightened-- Praksti has all activity and force in itself and is quite blind by nature. The Puruşa is intelligent but inert and Praksti is all activity but blind. The union of the two-the, blind and the cripple-leads to living. It is that the soul may be able to contemplate on its own nature and entirely separate itself that the union is made as of the halt of the cripple and the blind and through that union the universe is formed. It is Praksti that is privileged to carry the Puruşa to its final goal. It is through the manifestation of Praksti that the soul acquires discrimination and obtains mokşa. Is there any conscious co-operation between Purusa and Prakrti ? No, that cannot be for Praksti is Acetana and the Purusa cannot live in peace with it and yet there is this union between the two. Kapila vehemently protests against postulating a higher intelligence than Prakrti, īśvara in order to explain the union between the two. He advances arguments to show that there can be co-operation even in the region of the unconscious. Purposive adaptation according to Kapila need not necessarily imply the operation of an intelligent agent. Secretion of milk from the cow is no doubt necessary and useful for the calf. This secretion is no doubt a case of purposive adaptation, but all the same the cow is not consciously