Samayasara OR Nature of Self

Author(s): A Chakravarti
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 99

XCV111
SAMAYASARA
Purusha from the cosmic stage is an interesting philosophical metaphor. Prakriti or nature continues to spin round on account of its own original impulse even after Purusha's liberation. But this activity can no more influence the liberated Purusha because through knowledge he obtained freedom or Moksha.
The main objection is that Kapila starts his system as a panacea for the evils in this world. He thereby recognises at least to some extent the importance of ethical value. But the system as finally wrought out by him is incapable of accommodating any such moral value. Human volition and consequent human conduct as such are said to be the effects of achetana Prakiiti virtue and vice are alien to the Purusha. They are associated with the nonspiritual Prakriti and hence they do not affect the soul and yet with a strange inconsistency it is the fate of Purusha to enjoy the fruits pleasurable and painful of the karmas directly and immediately due to the activity of Prakriti. Why it is the fate of Purusha that he should vicariously suffer the consequences of an alien being is left entirely unexplained. To be consistent with his own presuppositions he ought to have made Purusha indifferent to the conscqucntial pleasure or pains of conduct. But that would have made the Purusha an altogether unintelligible shadow of reality. It is this inherent paralysis of his system that strikes us as an important defect. In spite of the various defects we have to pay our homage to the great ancient thinker for the courageous application of the rational method for the problem of life and reality. In a remote age of Indian thought when customary dogmas played the dominant part in the explanation of philosophical problems it is really a matter for admiration to see such a rigorous and rational thinker as Kapila. In philosophical study the method is more important than the results. The results may be modified but the method leaves a permanent impression and contributes an endowing value in creating the right intellectual attitude. If the method of analysis and explanation is admitted to be of greater philosophic value than the actual doctrine obtained thereby Kapila judged by this standard must occupy a place on a par with the world's greatest thinkers.
It was stated in a previous section that the doctrine of Ahimsa