Part 12 - Yoga-vāsiṣṭha, Śaṅkara Vedānta and Buddhist Vijñānavāda

To a superficial reader the idealism of the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha may appear to be identical with the Vedānta as interpreted by Śaṅkara; and in some of the later Vedānta works of the Śaṅkara school, such as the Jīvan-mukti-viveka, etc., so large a number of questions dealt with in the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha occur that one does not readily imagine that there may be any difference between this idealism and that of Śaṅkara. This point therefore needs some discussion.

The main features of Śaṅkara’s idealism consist in the doctrine that the self-manifested subject-objectless intelligence forms the ultimate and unchangeable substance of both the mind (antaḥkaraṇa) and the external world. Whatever there is of change and mutation is outside of this Intelligence, which is also the Reality. But, nevertheless, changes are found associated with this reality or Brahman, such as the external forms of objects and the diverse mental states. These are mutable and have therefore a different kind of indescribable existence from Brahman; but still they are somehow essentially of a positive nature^[1]. Śaṅkara’s idealism does not allow him to deny the existence of external objects as apart from perceiving minds, and he does not adhere to the doctrine of esse estpercipi. Thus he severely criticizes the views of the Buddhist idealists, who refuse to believe in the existence of external objects as apart from the thoughts which seem to represent them. Some of these arguments are of great philosophical interest and remind one of similar arguments put forth by a contemporary British Neo-realist in refutation of Idealism.

The Buddhists there are made to argue as follows: When two entities are invariably perceived simultaneously they are identical; now knowledge and its objects are perceived simultaneously; therefore the objects are identical with their percepts. Our ideas have nothing in the external world to which they correspond, and their existence during dreams, when the sense-organs are universally agreed to be inoperative, shows that for the appearance of ideas the operation of the sense-organs, indispensable for establishing connection with the so-called external world, is unnecessary. If it is asked how, if there are no external objects, can the diversity of percepts be explained, the answer is that such diversity may be due to the force of vāsanās or the special capacity of the particular moment associated with the cognition^[2]. If the so-called external objects are said to possess different special capacities which would account for the'diversity of percepts, the successive moments of the mental order may also be considered as possessing special distinctive capacities which would account for the diversity of percepts generated by those cognition moments. In dreams it is these diverse cognition moments which produce diversity of percepts.

Śaṅkara, in relating the above argument of the Buddhist idealist, says that external objects are directly perceived in all our perceptions, and how then can they be denied? In answer to this, if it is held that there is no object for the percepts excepting the sensations, or that the existence of anything consists in its being perceived, that can be refuted by pointing to the fact that the independent existence of the objects of perception, as apart from their being perceived, can be known from the perception itself, since the perceiving of an object is not the object itself; it is always felt that the perception of the blue is different from the blue which is perceived; the blue stands forth as the object of perception and the two can never be identical. This is universally felt and acknowledged, and the Buddhist idealist, even while trying to refute it, admits it in a way, since he says that what is inner perception appears as if it exists outside of us, externally. If externality as such never existed, how could there be an appearance of it in consciousness? When all experiences testify to this difference between knowledge and its object, the inner mental world of thoughts and ideas and the external world of objects, how can such a difference be denied? You may see a jug or remember it: the mental operation in these two cases varies, but the object remains the same^[3].

The above argument of Śaṅkara against Buddhist idealism conclusively proves that he admitted the independent existence of objects, which did not owe their existence to anybody’s knowing them. External objects had an existence different from and independent of the existence of the diversity of our ideas or percepts.

But the idealism of the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha is more like the doctrine of the Buddhist idealists than the idealism of Śaṅkara. For according to the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha it is only ideas that have some sort of existence. Apart from ideas or percepts there is no physical or external world having a separate or independent existence. Esse est per dpi is the doctrine of the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha , while Śaṅkara most emphatically refutes such a doctrine. A. later exposition of Vedānta by Prakāśānanda, known as Vedānta-siddhānta-muktāvalī, seems to derive its inspiration from the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha in its exposition of Vedānta on lines similar to the idealism of the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha , by denying the existence of objects not perceived (ajñāta-sattvānahhyupagama)^[4]. Prakāśānanda disputes the ordinarily accepted view that cognition of objects arises out of the contact of senses with objects; for objects for him exist only so long as they are perceived, i.e. there is no independent external existence of objects apart from their perception. All objects have only perceptual existence (prātītīka-sattva).

Both Prakāśānanda and the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha deny the existence of objects when they are not perceived, while Śaṅkara not only admits their existence, but also holds that they exist in the same form in which they are known; and this amounts virtually to the admission that our knowing an object does not add anything to it or modify it to any extent, except that it becomes known to us through knowledge. Things are what they are, even though they may not be perceived. This is in a way realism. The idealism of Śaṅkara’s Vedānta consists in this, that he held that the Brahman is the immanent self within us, which transcends all changeful experience and is also ultimate reality underlying all objects perceived outside of us in the external world. Whatever forms and characters there are in our experience, internal as well as external, have an indescribable and indefinite nature which passes by the name of māyā^[5]. Śaṅkara Vedānta takes it for granted that that alone is real which is unchangeable; what is changeful, though it is positive, is therefore unreal. The world is only unreal in that special sense; māyā belongs to a category different from affirmation and negation, namely the category of the indefinite.

The relation of the real, the Brahman, to this māyā in Śaṅkara Vedānta is therefore as indefinite as the māyā; the real is the unchangeable, but how the changeful forms and characters become associated with it or what is their origin or what is their essence, Śaṅkara is not in a position to tell us. The Yoga-vāsiṣṭha however holds that formless and characterless entity is the ultimate truth; it is said to be the Brahman, cit , or void (śūnya); but, whatever it may be, it is this characterless entity which is the ultimate truth. This ultimate entity is associated with an energy of movement, by virtue of which it can reveal all the diverse forms of appearances.

The relation between the appearances and the reality is not external, indefinite and indescribable, as it is to Śaṅkara, but the appearances, which are but the unreal and illusory manifestations of the reality, are produced by the operation of this inner activity of the characterless spirit, which is in itself nothing but a subject-objectless pure consciousness. But this inner and immanent movement does not seem to have any dialectic of its own, and no definite formula of the method of its operation for its productions can be given; the imaginary shapes of ideas and objects, which have nothing but a mere perceptual existence, are due not to a definite order, but to accident or chance (kākatālīya). Such a conception is indeed very barren, and it is here that the system of the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha is particularly defective. Another important defect of the system is that it does not either criticize knowledge or admit its validity, and the characterless entity which forms its absolute is never revealed in experience.

With Śaṅkara the case is different; for he holds that this absolute Brahman is also the self which is present in every experience and is immediate and self-revealed. But the absolute of the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha is characterless and beyond experience. The state of final emancipation, the seventh stage, is not a stage of bliss, like the Brahmahood of the Vedānta, but a state of characterlessness and vacuity almost. In several places in the work it is said that this ultimate state is differently described by various systems as Brahman, distinction of prakṛti and puruṣa , pure vijñāna and void (śūnya), while in truth it is nothing but a characterless entity. Its state of mukti (emancipation) is therefore described, as we have already seen above, as pāṣāṇavat or like a stone, which strongly reminds us of the Vaiśeṣika view of mukti. On the practical side it lays great stress on pauruṣa, or exertion of free-will and energy, it emphatically denies daiva as having the power of weakening pauruṣa or even exerting a superior dominating force, and it gives us a new view of karma as meaning only thought-activity. As against Śaṅkara, it holds that knowledge (jñāna) and karma maybe combined together, and that they are not for two different classes of people, but are both indispensable for each and every right-minded enquirer.

The principal practical means for the achievement of the highest end of the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha are the study of philosophical scripture, association with good men and self-criticism. It denounces external religious observances without the right spiritual exertions as being worse than useless. Its doctrine of esse est per dpi and that no experiences have any objective validity outside of themselves, that there are no external objects to which they correspond and that all are but forms of knowledge, reminds us very strongly of what this system owes to Vijñānavāda Buddhism. But, while an important Vijñānavāda work like the Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra tries to explain through its various categories the origin of the various appearances in knowledge, no such attempt is made in the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha, where it is left to chance. It is curious that in the Sanskrit account of Vijñānavāda by Hindu writers, such as Vācaspati and others, these important contributions of the system are never referred to either for the descriptive interpretation of the system or for its refutation. While there are thus unmistakable influences of Vijñānavāda and Gaudapāda on the Yoga-vāsiṣṭha, it seems to have developed in close association with the Śaiva, as its doctrine of spanda, or immanent activity, so clearly shows. This point will, however, be more fully discussed in my treatment of Śaiva philosophy.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

See the account of Śaṅkara Vedānta in my A History of Indian Philosophy, vol. 1, Cambridge, 1922, chapter x.

[2]:

Kasyacid eva jñāna-kṣaṇasya sa tādṛśaḥ sāmarthyātiśayo vāsanā-panṇāmaḥ.
      Bhāmatī, 11. 11. 28.

[3]:

Śaṅkara’s bhāṣya on the Brahma-sūtra, n. 2. 28.

[4]:

Siddhānta-muktāvalī. See The Pandit, new series, vol. XI, pp. 129-139.

[5]:

See my A History of Indian Philosophy, vol. I, ch. x.