Brahma Sutras (Shankaracharya)
by George Thibaut | 1890 | 203,611 words
English translation of the Brahma sutras (aka. Vedanta Sutras) with commentary by Shankaracharya (Shankara Bhashya): One of the three canonical texts of the Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy. The Brahma sutra is the exposition of the philosophy of the Upanishads. It is an attempt to systematise the various strands of the Upanishads which form the ...
IV, 1, 17
17. For (there is) also (a class of good works) other than this, according to some. (There is agreement) of both (teachers) (as to the fate of those works.)
'For also one other than this,' i.e. there is also a class of good works different from works of permanent obligation, viz. those good works which are performed with a view to a fruit. Of those latter works the passage quoted above from some Śākhā ('His friends enter on his good works') teaches the application. And first of those works Sūtra 14 teaches that, in the same way as evil deeds, they do not cling to the doer or else are destroyed. Both teachers, Jaimini as well as Bādarāyaṇa, are agreed that such works, undertaken for the fulfilment of some special wish, do not contribute towards the origination of true knowledge.