________________
Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
Vedānta (S'amkara)
479
knowledge becomes then antagonistic to the synthetic experience of the wholeness of being. S'amkara says -"As soon as Brahman is indicated in this way, knowledge arising of itself discards Nescience, and this whole world of names and forms, which had been hiding Brahman from us, melts away like the imagery of a dream."! It causes delusion and all sorts of attachments from which arise the various pairs. Avidya is really beginningless ( fa) and terminable (era) by the right knowledge of the Brahman. The two are opposed to each other as light and darkness, and as it does not possess any specific nature it is indefinable.
S'amkara explains the existence of the world with the idea of Máyà (Hrgtwhich means that power which causes illusion. Māyā makes the world appear as we find it. In reality nothing exists but the Brahman. The Brahman is the universal substratum of everything. To the Brahman nothing else exists but itself. To the Brahman the world does not exist. The world is only an appearance (face) which is superimposed upon the soul by the individ. ual finite souls. The world exists and does not exist. It does not exist because it is not everlasting, and it exists because the finite souls have its experience. The world does not exist in the Brahman; it appears to it just as we have dreams which disappear when we awaken or it appears as a snake appears on a rope. The whole world of the nāma
1 S'arikara (Com.) on Vedānt Sūtras. Tr. Thibaut, 3 .2.21, Vol. II, p. 163.
For Private And Personal
