Sramana Tradation

Author(s): G C Pandey
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 24

Šramanism As a Weltanschauung
it is salty indeed - so, lo, verily this great being (bhūta) infinite, limitless, is just a mass of knowledge. Arising out of these elements (bhūta) into them also one vanishes away. After death there is no consciousness". Consciousness or sañjñā is interpreted by Sankara as viseṣa sanjñā - the consciousness that I am such and such'-'ahamasāvamuşya putro mamedam kṣetram dhanam sukhi duḥkhityevam adi lakṣaṇā.' It may be recalled here that the Buddhists used both terms - vijñāna and sanjñā but with a distinction. Sañ jña is used for conceptual consciousness where objects are named, as for example 'blue' or 'yellow'.12 Vijñāna is used for perception but also for consciousness in general. It is Vijñāna that transmigrates13 and that becomes infinite and radiant (anantam sabbatopabham) after purification.14
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The most obvious interpretation of this is that it is similar to the Aristotelian doctrine of the mortality of the psyche and the immortality of Active Reason except that here it is not the death of Every man that is in question but the death of one who has known. Here we find the first expression of the utterly transcendent character of emancipation. The stream of psychic life and dualistic consciousness gets destroyed while in the eternity of the Supreme Being there is no distinction between the subject and the object with the result that one can hardly speak of knowledge or consciousness in the usual sense. This description remarkably anticipates the Buddhist description of Nirvana especially as understood by the Vijnanavadins. The Upanisadic passage runs thus - 'yatra hi dvaitam iva bhavati tad itara itaram jighrati...pasyati...abhivadati...manute...vijānāti...yatra va asya sarvamâtmaivabhut... kena kam jighreta...kena kam vijäntyät | yenedam sarvam vijānāti tam kena vijāniyād vijñātāramare kena vijäntyāditi' | 'Where there is duality there one can perceive or know another; who will perceive or cognize whom where everything has become the self? That by which he knows all this, by what will he know it. By what will he know the knower?' In a later section Yajnavalkya makes it
12. Cf. Suttanipata, Paramatthaka sutta. v. 7. Where saññā is described as pakappita, Cf. Stcherbatsky, Central Conception of Buddhism, p. 18.
13. For Sati's heresy, Majjhima (Roman ed.), I, pp. 256ff.
14. Majjhima, I, pp. 329 - viññāṇamanidassanumanantam sabbato pabham
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