World of Philosophy

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

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by bhakti, the role of a jīva would be wrongly construed as falsely and heroically free or abjectly passive. Or, again, this sense of the absolute doership of God may get closer to a statement like sarvam khalu idam brahma (All this indeed is Brahma) precariously bordering on unintended pantheism. But Madhvāchārya sees God in everything, everything in God, and as everything in every thing. God alone matters and nothing else. This indeed is the consummation of God-intoxication, to borrow Spinoza's famous term.
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Madhvāchārya's fascination with an overarching sovereign God may tempt one to ask, to save a shrunken jīva, whether he had anything to say on the intrinsic and indestructible worth of a jīva. An all-pervading God need not wipe out the vibrant jīva, who is described as anucchitti dharmā ayamatmā, indestructible by nature by the Brhadāranyaka Upanişad (4.5.13). Since, in his scheme, the entire reality is five-fold, where God, the world, and the various jīvas are eternal entities, the dimming out of a flickering jīva before an all-consuming splendour of God need not threaten his very existence. In his comprehensive work, Mahābhārata Tātparya Nirnaya, chapter 22, there is a very crucial passage which emphasizes the intrinsic paurusa (the andrea) of a jīva. When, in the Vanaparvan of the Mahābhārata, Yudhishtira keeps harping on the value of ksamā (forgiveness) as the highest dharma (right course of action), Madhvāchārya's Draupadi says:
Of course, Visnu is the mover of everything, along with Lakshmi and Caturmukha Brahma and the other chief deities, and all are in their control like wooden puppets, even so paurusa (andre'a] is never in vain (71). Under their command a person acts, then he reaps the fruit of good or ill actions as per his acts and not otherwise, and the person, though controlled, is indeed a kartā (72). If this is not so, what use is the paurusa and the commands and bans of Vedas? If the commands and the bans are not addressed to the person, they have to be applicable to God! He has to be tainted with the merit and the sins, which is absurd since he is supremely free. So the jīva is a kartā even when he is under God. (74)27
The argument that Draupadi places before Yudhisthira is exactly the one that forms the substance of the jīvakartștva section of the Brahmasūtra, chapter II, Section II. Draupadi tells Yudhisthira that man is a kartā, though subservient to God, otherwise the Vidhi-nisedhas (the do's and the don'ts) of the Vedas would affect God himself. She repeats kartā puruso 'pi vasyah (man is the doer, though dependent) thrice in
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