Yogadrstisamuccaya and Yogavinshika

Author(s): K K Dixit
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 36

28
YOGADṚSTISAMUCCAYA
[17] In this
verse
Haribhadra offers a definition of 'viewpoint' (rather of 'yoga-viewpoint). According to him, a faith in religious truths and a well-trained understanding are two integral elements of a 'viewpoint; and he goes on to add that a viewpoint enables us to refrain from a wrong course of conduct and pursue a right one. This reminds us of the traditiomal Jaina thesis that right faith, right understanding and right conduct are three constituents of the pathway to mokşa, But it will not be easy to accommodate Haribhadra's present classification of 'viewpoints' to the traditional gradation of gunasthanas. Thus the traditianal Jain positions (and a position adopted by Haribhadra himself in his earlier writings on yoga) divides man's course of ethical progress into the following three stages;
(1) A move towards cultivating right faith and right understanding (i.e. the Apunarbandhaka gunasthāna);
(ii) Cultivating right faith and right understanding (i.e. the Fourth guṇasthana).
(iii) Putting into practice the earlier cultivated right faith and right understanding (i.e. the Fifth to Fourteenth guṇasthānas).
Now Haribhadra's first four yoga-viewpoints will have to be accommodated in the first of these stages, but no distinction of the type made above between the second and third stages can be made in the case of the remaining four yoga-viewpoints which are all conceived as a complex of faith, understanding and action.
इयं चावरणापायभेदादष्टविधा स्मृता ।
सामान्येन विशेषास्तु भूयांसः सूक्ष्मभेदतः ||१८||
iyaṁ cavaraṇāpāyabhedad aṣṭavidhā smṛtā | sāmānyena viseṣās tu bhūyamsaḥ sükṣmabhedataḥ ||18||
This 'viewpoint' is said to be of eight general types corresponding to the types of removal-of-veil; as for the further specifications of these general types they are too many depending on subtle variations.
[18] In this verse Haribhadra tells us that he is dividing the yogaviewpoint into eight types even if it is possible to further sub-divide these types &s far as one wishes. Taken by itself this statement is thoroughly unexceptionable but one may doubt the propriety of the particular classification adopted by Haribhadra. Again, in speaking of the 'removal of veil' Haribhadra is employing the technical terminology of the Jaina tradition according to which a man's progress in the direction of acquiring right faith, right understanding and right conduct