________________
II2
PROBLEM OF AVIDYA
[ch.
course, with Purāņic ideas developed in between the time, in the following terms:
A soul under the sway of nescience (avidya) and possessed of attachment and hatred gets covetable body, sense-organs, sense-objects, pleasure etc. according to the forces of its past actions (āśaya) in the different worlds of the Creator (Brahman), the gods, the Prajāpati, the manes (pitys) and human beings, due to abundant creative religious merit? in conjunction with a little of demerit. On the other hand, due to abundant religious demerit in conjunction with a little of merit, it gets an uncovetable body, sense-organs, sense-objects, pain etc. in the worlds of devils (pretas) and brutes. Thus due to creative merit in conjunction with demerit, the worldly life continues unceasingly with repeated births among gods, men, animals and denizens of hell. But due to emancipative? merit acquired with full comprehension (of truth) and without any desire for result, one is born in a pure family, with ardent desire to know the means of ending (all) pain. He approaches a master and is enlightened with the knowledge of the true nature of the six categories. Thus his nescience is eliminated, and he becomes free from attachment. Now because of the absence of attachment and aversion, new dharma and adharma, owing their existence to them, do no more accrue, while the stored ones are exhausted by 'enjoyment'. After this, on the cessation of attachment and the like, the pure emancipatory dharma, causing happiness of contentment and non-attachment to the body, itself ceases by producing joy born of the intuition of the supreme reality viz. the soul.* Then due to the cessation of all merit and demerit, the body and the organs of the self with all the seeds of worldly life parched and exhausted fall apart. And there being no more origination of new body and the like, there is final emancipation much like the final extinc
tion of fire which has consumed all its fuel.'5 The soul is now bereft of all its specific qualities which derived their genesis from the conjunction of the soul with the mind, which is the starting point of worldly career. Emancipation is absolute and eternal quiescence.
1 pravartakād dharmāt has been translated as 'due to creative dharma'. 2 nivartaka. 3 nivsttilakṣaṇaḥ kevalo dharmaḥ.
4 paramārtha-darśanajam sukham kstvā nivartate. Vyomavati explains this as paramārthaḥ sarvapadārthānām ātmā, taddarśanajātam paramārthadarśanajam. The Nyäyakandali says paramārthadarśanajam ātmadarśanajam.
5 PB, pp. 643-44: avidușo rāgadveşavataḥ... mokşa iti.
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