World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 737

III.2.4). (He is the hearer, the thinker, the seer, the commander, the proclaimer, the knower, the intense understander, and the interior person within all beings). The Brihadaranyaka Upanişad also mentions him to be Yo' sanayāpipase, śokam moham jarām mrtyumatyeti (5.5.2) (He transcends hunger and thirst, sorrow and delusion, old age and death). In short, the divine doership is a perfect phenomenon since God is not afflicted by shortcomings of the body or the mind or even the disabling handicap of ageing and even death itself on the one hand and is omnipotent and omniscient, ruling the entire creation from within, on the other. The jīva 's doership pales into insignificance before the overarching presence of God.
The next sūtra, aśmādivat ca tadanupapatteh (II.1.24) (even if he is a cetana, a sentient being, he is like a piece of stone [dependent], it does not logically follow that he be a free doer.) Madhvāchārya cites a sloka from the Mahābhārata, 'O king, these beings are like the wooden dolls whose limbs are being moved by the puppeteer'. Though the analogy of the puppet and puppeteer is rather misleading or even derogatory, it effectively brings out the dependency of the jīva for the accomplishment of any action on a higher force. One may still insist that jīvas do accomplish their tasks and hence are fully independent agents. To give a more genuine background to any action performed by the jīva, the next sūtra, upasamhāra darśanāt neti chet, ksīrvaddhi (II. 1.25). If one 'argues that since jīva does accomplish actions, and hence a free agent, he is not so, as for example, though milk is apparently from the cow, it is the product of not merely the cow. The milk, indeed, is produced not by the visible cow, but by the invisible force of God which transforms gross food into its essence. The cow cannot claim the full credit for its milk, though we keep calling it the cow's milk.
The next sūtra corrects the seeming empirical impression or experience, by giving a telling analogy, upasahmāradarśanāt neti cet, ksīrvaddhi (II.i.26) (Even like the milk which seems to be produced by the cow all by itself, the task is not indeed completed by the jīva himself. The milk is produced, in fact, not by the visible quadruped, but by the invisible force of God which transforms gross food into its final essence. The cow can never claim the fullest credit for its milk, though we keep calling it the cow's milk. Incidentally, one is reminded of the same analogy, in a similar context, given in Gīta Tātyparya by Madhvāchārya quoting a passage from Brahmatarka :
.... Yasmāt svatantra kartstvam Visnoreva ca nānyagam
tadadhinam
svatantratvam
svavarāpksaivtu
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