Part 19 - Buddhi and Puruṣa

The question again arises that though puruṣa is pure intelligence, the guṇas are non-intelligent subtle substances, how can the latter come into touch with the former? Moreover, the puruṣa is pure inactive intelligence without any touch of impurity and what service or need can such a puruṣa have of the guṇas? This difficulty is anticipated by Sāṃkhya, which has already made room for its answer by assuming that one class of the guṇas called sattva is such that it resembles the purity and the intelligence of the puruṣa to a very high degree, so much so that it can reflect the intelligence of the puruṣa, and thus render its non-intelligent transformations to appear as if they were intelligent. Thus all our thoughts and other emotional or volitional operations are really the non-intelligent transformations of the buddhi or citta having a large sattva preponderance; but by virtue of the reflection of the puruṣa in the buddhi, these appear as if they are intelligent.

The self (puruṣa) according to Sāṃkhya-Yoga is not directly demonstrated by self-consciousness. Its existence is a matter of inference on teleological grounds and grounds of moral responsibility. The self cannot be directly noticed as being separate from the buddhi modifications. Through beginningless ignorance there is a confusion and the changing states of buddhi are regarded as conscious. These buddhi changes are further so associated with the reflection of the puruṣa in the buddhi that they are interpreted as the experiences of the puruṣa. This association of the buddhi with the reflection of the puruṣa in the buddhi has such a special fitness (yogyatā) that it is interpreted as the experience of the puruṣa. This explanation of Vācaspati of the situation is objected to by Vijñāna Bhikṣu.

Vijñāna Bhikṣu says that the association of the buddhi with the image of the puruṣa cannot give us the notion of a real person who undergoes the experiences. It is to be supposed therefore that when the buddhi is intelligized by the reflection of the puruṣa, it is then superimposed upon the puruṣa, and we have the notion of an abiding person who experiences^[1]. Whatever may be the explanation, it seems that the union of the buddhi with the puruṣa is somewhat mystical. As a result of this reflection of cit on buddhi and the superimposition of the buddhi the puruṣa cannot realize that the transformations of the buddhi are not its own.

Buddhi resembles puruṣa in transparency, and the puruṣa fails to differentiate itself from the modifications of the buddhi, and as a result of this non-distinction the puruṣa becomes bound down to the buddhi, always failing to recognize the truth that the buddhi and its transformations are wholly alien to it. This nondistinction of puruṣa from buddhi which is itself a mode of buddhi is what is meant by avidyā (non-knowledge) in Sāṃkhya, and is the root of all experience and all misery^[2].

Yoga holds a slightly different view and supposes that the puruṣa not only fails to distinguish the difference between itself and the buddhi but positively takes the transformations of buddhi as its own. It is no non-perception of the difference but positively false knowledge, that we take the puruṣa to be that which it is not (anyathākhyāti). It takes the changing, impure, sorrowful, and objective prakṛti or buddhi to be the changeless, pure, happiness-begetting subject. It wrongly thinks buddhi to be the self and regards it as pure, permanent and capable of giving us happiness. This is the avidyā of Yoga.

A buddhi associated with a puruṣa is dominated by such an avidyā, and when birth after birth the same buddhi is associated with the same puruṣa, it cannot easily get rid of this avidyā. If in the meantime pralaya takes place, the buddhi is submerged in the prakṛti, and the avidyā also sleeps with it. When at the beginning of the next creation the individual buddhis associated with the puruṣas emerge, the old avidyās also become manifest by virtue of it and the buddhis associate themselves with the puruṣas to which they were attached before the pralaya. Thus proceeds the course of saṃsāra. When the avidyā of a person is rooted out by the rise of true knowledge, the buddhi fails to attach itself to the puruṣa and is forever dissociated from it, and this is the state of mukti.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Tattvavaiśāradī and Yogavārttika, 1. 4.

[2]:

This indicates the nature of the analysis of illusion with Sāṃkhya. It is the non-apprehension of the distinction of two things (e.g. the snake and the rope) that is the cause of illusion; it is therefore called the akhyāti (non-apprehension) theory of illusion which must be distinguished from the anyathākhyāti (misapprehension) theory of illusion of Yoga which consists in positively misapprehending one (e.g. the rope) for the other (e.g. snake). Yogavārttika, 1. 8.