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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
Vedānta (Sankara)
:
461
the phenomenal plane, so long as it is implicated in the transmigratory existence. But these qualities are again the results of the adjuncts like the mind and buddhi which qualify the soul.' Thus, the whole empirical life of the soul which is mainly characterised by activity, experience and enjoyment of pleasure and pain is itself apparent and illusory. In fact the soul exists only as caused by the adjuncts like the mind and buddhi. The empirical soul has no real existence of its own. The individual soul is only an appearance of the transcendental Self that appears through some adjuncts that cling to it. As Mahendranath Sircar describes the empirical soul or the Ego -." The ego is a scientific and a pragmatic reality. It has a psychological and epistemological ideality, but no transcendent reality, a psychological continuity, but no metaphysical unity. The Ātman which is pure and boundless becomes limited in its powers and size. As Paul Deussen points out, the following qualities characterise the soul in the state of saṁsāra. (1) The soul is not all-pervading and omnipresent but dwells in the heart, its size being limited to that of the Manas. (2) It is not also omniscient and omnipotent due to the limiting adjuncts which encircle it; but they remain latent in it. (3) The soul becomes an agent (act) and enjoyer
1 Samkara ( Com.) on Vedānta Sūtras (Tr. Thibaut), 2. 3. 29, Vol. II, p. 44.
बुद्धयुपाभिधर्माध्यासनिमित्तं हि कतृत्वभोक्तृत्वादिलक्षणं
संसारित्वमकर्तुरभोक्तुश्चासंसारिणो नित्यमुकस्य सत आत्मनः । .: : Sircar Mahendranath : Comparative Studies in Vedāntism,
p. 123.
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