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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
454
Ātmap and Mokşa
things to be illumined, not to the absence of its own nature." The Nyāya Vais'eșika holds that consciousness or intelligence is produced in the soul as an adventitious quality when it is joined to the internal organ (the mind ). But S'aṁkara in reply says, as mentioned above, that the intelligence is ever present in the nature of the soul itself; but due to the adjunct through which it appears, it appears to produce consciousness sometimes. The soul is constituted, in its essential nature, of eternal consciousness or intelligence.
The soul is permanent and imperishable, according to S'amkara. He argues as against the Buddhists that the soul cannot be denied nor can it be momentary.? Sankara points out against the universal impermanence the impossibility of release or Moksa if there were no abiding or permanent entity like the soul. The sufferer alone will attain liberation and the sufferer alone will seek nirvāna. It implies that, that which suffers must continue to exist until iiberation is attained, and it would be against the Buddhist tenet of universal impermanence. Again, he criticises the possibility of causality of two succeeding moments; for the effect-moment appears when the cause moment has already vanished. The former momentary existence which has ceased to be and has entered into the state of non-existence cannot be the cause of
i Sankara (Com.) on Vedānta Sūtras (Tr. Thibaut ), 2.3. 18, Vol. II, pp. 34, 35. : Ibid. 2.2. 18, Vol. I, p. 403.
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