Extracts and synthesis from Abraham Eraly’s book, “The First Spring – The Golden Age of India” – a study of ancient Indian civilization
India has six orthodox schools of philosophy:
- Samkhya – dualistic, non-theistic evolutionary theory
- Yoga – theory of mind-body discipline for salvation
- Vedanta – monistic theory that regards the phenomenal world as illusion
- Mimamsa – methodology of Vedic exegesis
- Nyaya – dialectics and epistemology
- Vaiseshika – atomic theory
In addition, there are a number of heterodox systems:
- Ajivikas – fatalists
- Charvakas – materialists
- Buddhists
- Jains
Samkhya
Samkhya means logical investigation into the processes of the world through enumeration and analysis of its evolutionary stages.
Samkhya propounds a dualistic theory that divides the world into two distinct, independent primary entities: Purushas (spirits) and Prakriti (matter).
The final disengagement between a particular Purusha and a particular being takes place only when the karmic energy of that being has been fully expended, and its transmigrations have ceased.
Samkhya School views the formation of world as a result of the natural unfolding of the inherent potential of matter. Matter is uncreated and indestructible. It has always existed and will always exist. However, matter does not remain the same always, but undergoes endless evolutionary mutations. These mutations of matter are the result of the interplay of the three basic qualities (gunas) of matter:
- Sattva (purity) – luminous, serene intelligence, signified by the colour white
- Rajus – passion and activity, signified by red
- Tamas – dullness and inertia, signified by black
The three gunas have distinct but interrelated functions: sattva conceives, rajus acts, tamas inhibits
The basic flaw behind all the paradoxes in Samkhya is that it assumes that Prakriti cannot feel any misery because it is only matter and is non-conscious. But if buddhi, ahamkara and manas, all psychic faculties, are aspects of matter, why not consider consciousness also as an aspect of matter?
Yoga
The common meaning of the term yoga is ‘to join’, but is also means ‘endeavor of method’, and it is on the latter sense that the term is used in Yoga. The philosophical complement of Yoga is Samkhya, and the two were at one time considered the two halves of one system. While Samkhya explains how and why the spirit gets entangled with matter and its mutations, and thereby suffers apparent misery, Yoga prescribes the practical means by which the spirit can free itself from this entanglement and regain its original state of pure, serene consciousness.
Yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind-stuff. Yoga holds that the reality of the self is to be found not by means of an objective use of the mind, but by the suppression of its activities and penetration beneath the mental strata. The yogi therefore empties his mind of all its existing clutter, and keeps his senses and his mind perfectly clear and still, so that the subtle and rarefied knowledge of the true self may reveal itself spontaneously.
One cannot obtain perfection in Raja-yoga without Hatha-yoga, nor perfection in Hatha-yoga without Raja-yoga. So both should be practiced till perfection is obtained.
Vedanta
For Vedantists, the creation concept is redundant, as they hold that the phenomenal world is an illusion. “Brahman satyam, jagam mithya” – Brahman alone is real, the world is unreal.
There are three main Vedanta schools:
- Advaita – absolute monism : Brahman is the only reality; the phenomenal world is an illusion. Propounded by Sankara in the 9th century
- Vishistadvaita – qualified monism : the phenomenal world is real, but it is a manifestation of Brahman. Propounded by Ramanuja in the twelfth century
- Dvaita – dualism : the phenomenal world has a reality independent of Brahman, but Brahman rules over it. Propounded by Madhava in the thirteenth century
Brahman is the limitless, attributeless, unchanging entity behind the apparent diversity and mutability of the temporal world. Advaita notions about the nature of reality, though based solely on intuition, and not on any empirical inquiry, nevertheless agree fairly well with several modern scientific concepts. Just as Advaita holds that the whole universe is fundamentally one, so does modern science hold that everything in the universe – space, time and energy – are all manifestations of the same thing. Further, modern neuroscientists would concur with Vedantists that our perceptions of the world are mental constructions.
The knowledge of Brahman is a direct inner knowledge, an intuitive enlightenment that comes in a flash. It cannot be predicted when or how this flash of enlightenment will come, but its coming would entirely transform one’s life. How does one prepare oneself to receive this enlightenment? The basic requirement for this is to free oneself of all earthly entanglements through the renunciation of all desires. This does not, however, mean that the aspirant should drop out of society, but only that he should perform his duties without craving for results.
Ramanuja’s philosophy is still Advaita, in that he recognizes only one ultimate, unchanging reality, Brahman. But he accommodates plurality in the system by maintaining that Brahman subsists in a plurality of forms as souls and matter. Ramanuja’s conception of Brahman as Vishnu, a loving and merciful god, and his advocacy of devotion to god as the means of salvation, were ideas to which the common people could easily relate.
Mimamsa
The term mimamsa means inquiry, and the objective of the school is to examine the Vedic texts to elucidate their injunctions on religious rituals and personal duties. According to Mimamsa, the correct performance of Vedic rituals is the only means of attaining salvation. The basic tenet of Mimamsa is that the Vedas are perfect and valid for all time, for they are not the works of men, or even of gods, but eternal and self-existent wisdom. Mimamsa pays particular attention to the study of the words used in the Vedas, holding that the wisdom of the Vedas is inseparable from the words in which they are expressed. Mimamsakas consider rituals as efficacious in themselves, which do not require the involvement of gods to achieve their objectives – rituals produce their results automatically through their occult potency.
Nyaya
This school is concerned with rationale examination of evidence as the means of arriving at correct knowledge. And the knowledge it seeks is empirical knowledge, but this is given a religious purpose by holding that the quest for empirical knowledge is the means to salvation. Nyaya made an invaluable contribution to Indian philosophy and science, by providing them with the methodology of logical analysis.
Vaiseshika
Vaiseshika is a theory of atoms that holds that the particularity of anything is dependent on its atomic structure – though atoms themselves are eternal and unchanging, they forever combine, rearrange and separate, to produce, transform and terminate all the particular things and beings in the world. Atoms, according to the Vaiseshika School, are of four kinds: of the earth, water, fire and air. Vasiseshikas also postulate the existence of three eternal and all pervasive non-atomic substances: ether, space and time.
Charvakas
Materialist philosophers who held that one should do whatever gives one pleasure, without any regard to social conventions or morality. The basic premise of Charvakas is that the proof of anything is its verifiability. Sense perception is, therefore, the only valid source of knowledge; all other presumed means of knowledge – inference, mystic insight, authority of the scriptures, and so on, recognized by the orthodox schools – are invalid. The notions of god, afterlife, karma and so on are all absurd, Charvakas maintain. Nothing survives death.
Buddhism
Buddha said that solutions to the miseries of life have to be sought in life itself, here on earth, not in any transcendental world. There is no path in the sky.
Buddha did not claim any definitive validity for his precepts, but said that he was only indicating the general direction in which men should proceed to attain liberation, and that each individual has to find his own particular path and wend his own way along it. Buddhism does require each individual to be totally responsible for himself, but being responsible for onself is not egoism, but self-reliance. Without being responsible for onself, one cannot be responsible for others.
It is possible and advisable for everyone to live sensibly by taking the middle path between intemperate worldly self-indulgence and the equally intemperate ascetic self-mortification.
While most religions repose faith in god, Buddhism reposes faith in man. Inevitably, the emhasis of Buddhism was on conduct, not on faith.
Buddhism was originally a rationalistic, godless religion, concerned primarily with the welfare of man and society here and now, rather than with the unknowable hereafter, but as it evolved from a monastic order into a popular religion, it became, in its Mahayana sect, a religion of saviours, miracles and elaborate rituals, to serve the religious needs of the common people.
In Theravada (Hinyana), each person has to work out his salvation all by himself, without any help from anyone, man or god, but in Mahayana this is an interdependent activity in which each seeker receives the aid and support of other seekers, as well as the aid of sages and deities. Thervada emphasizes the solitariness of man, Mahayana emphasizes social bonding. While the Thervada ideal is for man to attain nirvana, the ideal of Mahayana is for man to stay on in the world to help others. The Mahayana cultivates virtues and accumulates merit not for his own salvation, but for the benefit of all beings in all the worlds. This joyous, altruistic zeal of everyone to help everyone else is a distinguishing characteristic of Mahayana.
Orthodox Buddhism was not a religion suited for the masses. What the common people needed was a faith that would make their life bearable with the assurance that whatever was happening to them was ordained by fate, and console them by holding out the hope that divine favour would make their life better in the future or at least in the hereafter. People needed the emotional comfort of bonding with their gods through love and worship. Orthodox Buddhism provided no such solace. Instead, it insisted that men should take full responsibility for their lives and redeem themselves through their own disciplined, virtuous and compassionate life. This challenge appealed to the cultural elite, but not to the common man trapped in the daily grind of life.
Jainism
Of the three great religions of India, only Jainism, small and tightly knit, endured into modern times without any radical changes. Jainism is a deeply conservative religion, but paradoxically, it is also the most radical of all the great religions of the world, breaking all conventional notions about what a religion should be – its tenets were uncompromisingly atheistic when they were first enunciated in the mid-first millennium BCE, and they have remained so ever since.
Philanthropy is a religious obligation for Jains, and they sometimes carried this to great extremes. Uttering falsehoods, even exaggerations, are major sins in Jainism, and any kind of cheating absolutely abominable. More than anything else, Jains are required to show compassion for all living beings, and practice ahimsa, non-violence. Jainism, like early Buddhism, is essentially a community of monks, and only they are considered capable of attaining salvation. The disciplinary demands on Jain monks are therefore far greater than on laymen.
It is truly remarkable that this rigidly austere and ethically exacting religion with a gloomy outlook on life, which offers no consolations of faith in gods and rituals, has endured all these centuries. Perhaps what enabled Jainism to survive are the very qualities that made it a difficult and demanding religion – its rigid orthodoxy and uncompromising moral severity – for these qualities gave the religion a certain exclusivity as the proud faith of a select few, who jealously preserved its unique identity in a world of perpetual flux.
