that the very circumstance of its being an unembodied state is the effect of merit, we reply that that cannot be, since Scripture declares that state to be naturally and originally an unembodied one. 'The wise who knows the Self as bodiless within the bodies, as unchanging among changing things, as great and omnipresent does never grieve ' (Ka. Up. II, %%)\ 'He is without breath, without mind, pure'(Mu. Up, II, i, 2); 'That person is not attached to anything' (Br/. Up. IV, 3, 15)1. All which passages establish the fact that so-called release differs from all the fruits of action, and is an eternally and essentially disembodied state. Among eternal things, some indeed may be 'eternal, al- though changing' (pari/zaminitya), viz. those, the idea of whose identity is not destroyed, although they may undergo changes; such, for instance, are earth and the other ele- ments in the opinion of those who maintain the eternity of the world, or the three gu^as in the opinion of the Sankhyas. But this (moksha) is eternal in the true sense, i. e. eternal without undergoing any changes (ku^astha- nitya), omnipresent as ether, free from all modifications, absolutely self-sufficient, not composed of parts, of self- luminous nature. That bodiless entity in fact, to which merit and demerit with their consequences and threefold time do not apply, is called release ; a definition agreeing with scriptural passages, such as the following : ' Different from merit and demerit, different from effect and cause, different from past and future ' (Ka. Up. I, %, 14). It2 (i. e. moksha) is, therefore, the same as Brahman in the enquiry into which we are at present engaged. If Brahman were represented as supplementary to certain actions, and re-
1 The first passage shows that the Self is not joined to the gross body ; the second that it is not joined to the subtle body ; the third that is independent of either.
2 Ananda Giri omits ' 2X2J1! His comment is : prnhaggi^asa- vishayatva^ k& dharmadyasprzsh/atvaztt brahma/zo yuktam ityaha I tad iti 1 ata^ jabdapaZ/fe dharmadyaspar^e karmaphalavailakshawyaw hetukr/'tam. — The above translation follows Govindananda's first explanation. Tat kaivalyam brahmaiva karmaphalavilaksha^atvad ity artha^.
I Adhyaya, I Pad a, 4. 2 9
lease were assumed to be the effect of those actions, it would be non-eternal, and would have to be considered merely as something holding a pre-eminent position among the described non-eternal fruits of actions with their various degrees. But that release is something eternal is acknow- ledged by whoever admits it at all, and the teaching con- cerning Brahman can therefore not be merely supplemen- tary to actions.
There are, moreover, a number of scriptural passages which declare release to follow immediately on the cognition of Brahman, and which thus preclude the possibility of an effect intervening between the two ; for instance, ' He who knows Brahman becomes Brahman' (Mu. Up. Ill, 3, 9) ; 'All his works perish when He has been beheld, who is the higher and the lower' (Mu. Up. II, 2, 8); ' He who knows the bliss of Brahman fears nothing ' (Taitt. Up. II, 9) ; ' O Ganaka, you have indeed reached fearlessness ' (Br/. Up. IV, 2,4); ' That Brahman knew its Self only, saying, I am Brahman. From it all this sprang' (Br/. Up. I, 4, 10); 4 What sorrow, what trouble can there be to him who beholds that unity ? ' (f s. Up, 7.) We must likewise quote the passage, Br/. Up. I, 4, 10, (' Seeing this the Rishi V&madeva understood : I was Manu, I was the sun,') in order to exclude the idea of any action taking place between one's seeing Brahman and becoming one with the universal Self; for that passage is analogous to the following one, ' standing he sings,' from which we understand that no action due to the same agent inter- venes between the standing and the singing. Other scrip- tural passages show that the removal of the obstacles which lie in the way of release is the only fruit of the knowledge of Brahman ; so, for instance, ' You indeed are our father, you who carry us from our ignorance to the other shore ' (Pr. Up. VI, 8) ; ' I have heard from men like you that he who knows the Self overcomes grief. I am in grief. Do, Sir, help me over this grief of mine ' (Kh. Up. VII, 1, 3) ; ' To him after his faults had been rubbed out, the vener- able Sanatkumara showed the other side of darkness' {Kk* Up. VII, 26, 2). The same is the purport of the Sutra, sup- ported by arguments, of (Gautama) A^arya, ' Final release
30 VEDANTA-SIJTRAS.
results from the successive removal of wrong knowledge, faults, activity, birth, pain, the removal of each later mem- ber of the series depending on the removal of the preceding member' (Nyay. Su. I, i, %) ; and wrong knowledge itself is removed by the knowledge of one's Self being one with the Self of Brahman.
Nor is this knowledge of the Self being one with Brahman a mere (fanciful) combination \ as is made use of, for instance, in the following passage, ' For the mind is endless, and the VIrvedevas are endless, and he thereby gains the endless world ' (Br/. Up. Ill, i, g)2 ; nor is it an (in reality unfounded) ascription (superimposition) 3, as in the passages, 'Let him meditate on mind as Brahman,' and ' Aditya is Brahman, this is the doctrine' (Kk. Up. Ill, 18, i ; 19, i), where the contemplation as Brahman is superimposed on the mind, Aditya and so on ; nor, again, is it (a figurative conception of identity) founded on the connection (of the things viewed as identical) with some special activity, as in the passage, 'Air is indeed the absorber ; breath is indeed the absorber 4 ' (Kh. Up. IV, 3, 1 ; 3) ; nor is it a mere (ceremonial) purifi- cation of (the Self constituting a subordinate member) of an action (viz. the action of seeing, &c, Brahman), in the same way as, for instance, the act of looking at the sacri-
1 Sampat. Sampan namalpe vastuny alambane samanyena kena&n mahato vastuna^ sampadanam. Ananda Giri.
2 In which passage the mind, which may be called endless on account of the infinite number of modifications it undergoes, is identified with the VLrvedevas, which thereby constitute the chief object of the meditation ; the fruit of the meditation being immor- tality. The identity of the Self with Brahman, on the other hand, is real, not only meditatively imagined, on account of the attribute of intelligence being common to both.
8 Adhyasa^ jastrato^tasmi^s taddhi^. Sampadi sampadyama-
nasya pradhanyenanudhyanam, adhyase tu alambanasyeti vLresha^.
Ananda Giri.
4 Air and breath each absorb certain things, and are, therefore, designated by the same term ' absorber/ Seyaw sawvargadrzsh/ir vayau prawe £a da^a^agataw ^agad danayati yatha ^ivatmani brim- hawakriyaya brahmad/Ysh/ir amr/'tatvayaphalaya kalpataiti. Bhamatt.
I Adhyaya, I Pada, 4. 3 1
ficial butter 1. For if the knowledge of the identity of the Self and Brahman were understood in the way of combina- tion and the like, violence would be done thereby to the connection of the words whose object, in certain passages, it clearly is to intimate the fact of Brahman and the Self being really identical ; so, for instance, in the following passages, * That art thou ' (Kh. Up. VI, 8, 7) ; < I am Brahman5 (Bri. Up.
I, 4, 10) ; ' This Self is Brahman ' (Bri. Up. II, 5, 19). And other texts which declare that the fruit of the cognition of Brahman is the cessation of Ignorance would be contradicted thereby ; so, for instance, 'The fetter of the heart is broken, all doubts are solved' (Mu. Up. II, 2, 8). Nor, finally, would it be possible, in that case, satisfactorily to explain the passages which speak of the individual Self becoming Brahman : such as *He who knows Brahman becomes Brahman ' (Mu. Up. Ill, 3,9). Hence the knowledge of the unity of Brahman and the Self cannot be of the nature of figurative combination and the like. The knowledge of Brahman does, therefore, not depend on the active energy of man, but is analogous to the knowledge of those things which are the objects of perception, inference, and so on, and thus depends on the object of knowledge only. Of such a Brahman or its knowledge it is impossible to establish, by reasoning, any connection with actions.
Nor, again, can we connect Brahman with acts by repre- senting it as the object of the action of knowing. For that it is not such is expressly declared in two passages, viz. Mt is different from the known and again above (i.e. different from) the unknown * (Ken. Up. I, 3) ; and l How should he know him by whom he knows all this ? ' (Bri. Up.
II, 4, 13.) In the same way Brahman is expressly declared not to be the object of the act of devout meditation, viz. in the second half of the verse, Ken. Up. I, 5, whose first half
1 The butter used in the upaffwuyag-a is ceremonially purified by the wife of the sacrificer looking at it ; so, it might be said, the Self of him who meditates on Brahman (and who as kart/Y — agent — stands in a subordinate ahga-relation to the karman of meditation) is merely purified by the cognition of its being one with Brahman.
32 VEDANTA-S^TRAS.
declares it not to be an object (of speech, mind, and so on), ' That which is not proclaimed by speech, by which speech is proclaimed, that only know to be Brahman, not that on which people devoutly meditate as this.' If it should be objected that if Brahman is not an object (of speech, mind, &c.) the .rastra can impossibly be its source, we refute this objection by the remark that the aim of the ^astra is to discard all distinctions fictitiously created by Nescience. The Astra's purport is not to represent Brahman definitely as this or that object, its purpose is rather to show that Brahman as the eternal subject (pratyagatman, the inward Self) is never an object, and thereby to remove the dis- tinction of objects known, knowers, acts of knowledge, &c, which is fictitiously created by Nescience. Accordingly the .sastra says, ' By whom it is not thought by him it is thought, by whom it is thought he does not know it ; un- known by those who know it, it is known by those who do not know it' (Ken. Up. II, 3) ; and 'Thou couldst not see the seer of sight, thou couldst not hear the hearer of hearing, nor perceive the perceiver of perception, nor know the knower of knowledge' (Bn. Up. Ill, 4, 2). As thereby (i. e. by the knowledge derived from the sastra) the imagination of the transitoriness of Release which is due to Nescience is discarded, and Release is shown to be of the nature of the eternally free Self, it cannot be charged with the im- perfection of non-eternality. Those, on the other hand, who consider Release to be something to be effected properly maintain that it depends on the action of mind, speech, or body. So, likewise, those who consider it to be a mere modification. Non-eternality of Release is the certain consequence of these two opinions; for we observe in common life that things which are modifications, such as sour milk and the like, and things which are effects, such as jars, &c, are non-eternal. Nor, again, can it be said that there is a dependance on action in consequence of (Brahman or Release) being something which is to be obtained * ; for as Brahman constitutes a person's Self it is
1 An hypothesis which might be proposed for the purpose of