Part 22 - Īśvara and Salvation

Nyāya seeks to establish the existence of Īśvara on the basis of inference. We know that the Jains, the Sāṃkhya and the Buddhists did not believe in the existence of Īśvara and offered many antitheistic arguments. Nyāya wanted to refute these and prove the existence of Īśvara by an inference of the sāmānyato-dṛṣṭa type.

The Jains and other atheists held that though things in the world have production and decay, the world as a whole was never produced, and it was never therefore an effect. In contrast to this view the Nyāya holds that the world as a whole is also an effect like any other effect. Many geological changes and landslips occur, and from these destructive operations proceeding in nature it may be assumed that this world is not eternal but a result of production. But even if this is not admitted by the atheists they can in no way deny the arrangement and order of the universe.

But they would argue that there was certainly a difference between the order and arrangement of human productions (e.g. a jug) and the order and arrangement of the universe; and therefore from the order and arrangement (sanniveśa-viśiṣṭatā) of the universe it could not be argued that the universe was produced by a creator; for, it is from the sort of order and arrangement that is found in human productions that a creator or producer could be inferred. To this, Nyāya answers that the concomitance is to be taken between the “order and arrangement” in a general sense and “the existence of a creator” and not with specific cases of “order and arrangement,” for each specific case may have some such peculiarity in which it differs from similar other specific cases; thus the fire in the kitchen is not the same kind of fire as we find in a forest fire, but yet we are to disregard the specific individual peculiarities of fire in each case and consider the concomitance of fire in general with smoke in general.

So here, we have to consider the concomitance of “order and arrangement” in general with “the existence of a creator,” and thus though the order and arrangement of the world may be different from the order and arrangement of things produced by man, yet an inference from it for the existence of a creator would not be inadmissible. The objection that even now we see many effects (e.g. trees) which are daily shooting forth from the ground without any creator being found to produce them, does not hold, for it can never be proved that the plants are not actually created by a creator. The inference therefore stands that the world has a creator, since it is an effect and has order and arrangement in its construction. Everything that is an effect and has an order and arrangement has a creator, like the jug. The world is an effect and has order and arrangement and has therefore a creator.

Just as the potter knows all the purposes of the jug that he makes, so Īśvara knows all the purposes of this wide universe and is thus omniscient. He knows all things always and therefore does not require memory; all things are perceived by him directly without any intervention of any internal sense such as manas, etc. He is always happy. His will is eternal, and in accordance with the karma of men the same will produces dissolution, creates, or protects the world, in the order by which each man reaps the results of his own deeds.

As our self which is in itself bodiless can by its will produce changes in our body and through it in the external world, so Īśvara also can by his will create the universe though he has no body. Some, however, say that if any association of body with Īśvara is indispensable for our conception of him, the atoms may as well be regarded as his body, so that just as by the will of our self changes and movement of our body take place, so also by his will changes and movements are produced in the atoms^[1].

The naiyāyikas in common with most other systems of Indian philosophy believed that the world was full of sorrow and that the small bits of pleasure only served to intensify the force of sorrow. To a wise person therefore everything is sorrow (sarvaṁ duḥkhaṃ vivekinaḥ) ; the wise therefore is never attached to the so-called pleasures of life which only lead us to further sorrows.

The bondage of the world is due to false knowledge (mithyājñānd) w’hich consists in thinking as my own self that which is not my self, namely body, senses, manas, feelings and knowledge; when once the true knowledge of the six padārthas and as Nyāya says, of the proofs (Pramāṇa), the objects of knowledge (prameya), and of the other logical categories of inference is attained, false knowledge is destroyed. False knowledge can be removed by constant thinking of its opposite (pratipakṣa - bhāvana), namely the true estimates of things. Thus when any pleasure attracts us, we are to think that this is in reality but pain, and thus the right knowledge about it will dawn and it will never attract us again. Thus it is that with the destruction of false knowledge our attachment or antipathy to things and ignorance about them (collectively called doṣa , cf. the kleśa of Patañjali) are also destroyed.

With the destruction of attachment actions (pravṛtti) for the fulfilment of desires cease and with it rebirth ceases and with it sorrow ceases. Without false knowledge and attachment, actions cannot produce the bondage of karma that leads to the production of body and its experiences. With the cessation of sorrow there is emancipation in which the self is divested of all its qualities (consciousness, feeling, willing, etc.) and remains in its own inert state. The state of mukti according to Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika is neither a state of pure knowledge nor of bliss but a state of perfect qualitilessness, in which the self remains in itself in its own purity. It is the negative state of absolute painlessness in mukti that is sometimes spoken of as being a state of absolute happiness (ānanda), though really speaking the state of mukti can never be a state of happiness. It is a passive state of self in its original and natural purity unassociated with pleasure, pain, knowledge, willing, etc.^[2].

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

See Nyāyamañjarī, pp. 190-204, Īśvarānutnāna of Raghunātha Siromani and Udayana’s Kustimāñjalī.

[2]:

Nyāyamañjarī, pp. 499-533.