Liberation in early Advaita Vedanta
by Aleksandar Uskokov | 2018 | 195,782 words
This page relates ‘Heaven as Liberation’ of the study named “Scripture and the Hermeneutics of Liberation in Early Advaita Vedanta” which highlights how liberation (in Sanskrit: Moksha) is posited as the “highest good”—i.e., it represents freedom from the cyclical process of birth and rebirth. It further shows that Shankara’s doctrine emphasizes that liberation is solely derived from knowledge of Brahman.
Go directly to: Footnotes.
2. Heaven as Liberation
On this point some blabbermouths, ignorant of the specific meaning of what the śruti text says, proclaim that sons and similar things are means of liberation.[1]
Scholars customarily say that the idea of liberation was absent in early Mīmāṃsā and that it was inorganic to the system. We may quote Halbfass’s assessment as quite representative: “Final liberation (mokṣa), commonly accepted as a leading theme or even as the basic concern of philosophical thought, does not play any role in the older literature of the system; Mīmāṃsā deals with dharma, not with mokṣa.”[2] Halbfass goes on to argue that this attitude towards liberation changes with Kumārila, at whose hands Mīmāṃsā is transformed into a rounded and comprehensive philosophical system, in which “karma and saṃsāra, as well as mokṣa, become more significant and manifest in thought and argumentation, not so much as explicit themes, but as tacitly accepted presuppositions or as points of reference and orientation.”[3] They become reference points, but not determinants of the system, and “the theme of final liberation … is not really his [Kumārila's] own concern.”[4] This characterization certainly seems correct in view of Śabara’s silence on liberation, yet curiously if we look at Mīmāṃsā reception by Śabara’s and Kumārila’s contemporaries, it does not come as right: Mīmāṃsakas are read as advocates of heaven as a state of liberation.
We saw in the previous chapter that Śabara theorized the human good which dharma brings as “heaven” or svarga, not to be understood as a place one goes to in the hereafter or as some pleasurable substance of the more mundane kind, but just as a state of happiness. Śabara developed his account under some constrictions of the Mīmāṃsā ritual technology: it was necessary to define heaven as a state rather than a place or a substance, because only in that case could heaven be superordinate to the ritual performance: by the requirements of Vedic ritual, substances are generally for the purpose of the ritual (kartvartha), not for the purpose of man (puruṣārtha), and places are not things which one can really produce.
We also saw that Śabara defined heaven as a state of felicity which is desirable equally to all men, and a state under which all attainments desirable to men could be classified.[5] This made the category quite open for different associations and determinations. While only the state of felicity would qualify as heaven, Śabara did not specify what causes the appearance of such happiness or whence it would derive, or even what this happiness precisely is. And, while a specific place to which the deceased go after death might not be what heaven is, that did not preclude the possibility that there is such a place in which the state of happiness called heaven can be experienced. Kumārila, in fact, refining Śabara’s definition, added that heaven is to be experienced in a specific place, other than the one in which the ritual action was performed: heaven is unsurpassed happiness, niratiśaya-prīti, to be enjoyed in another place and a future life.[6] We should note that Vedāntins also commonly associated svarga with bliss. Śaṅkara, for one, commenting on the last paragraph of the Kena Upaniṣad, says: “’In the heavenly world’ means in Brahman that is bliss in nature. Because of the qualification ‘endless,’ the word ‘heaven’ does not refer to the place of the gods (triviṣṭapa).”[7]
On the other hand, there were, it appears, Mīmāṃsakas who claimed that heaven and hell can refer only to the happiness and suffering that are experienced in this very lifetime as a consequence of the performance of sacrifice and of engaging in prohibited action respectively.[8] The category of heaven was open.
What Śabara did claim was that the attainment of heaven through ritual action is the highest good of human life, niḥśreyasa.[9] So, if heaven was the term for all human attainments and if it was the term for the highest good of human life, a term which others by that time used for liberation,[10] someone could have easily drawn the conclusion that Mīmāṃsakas hope to attain liberation by the performance of ritual action. And some sure enough did. Bhavya, for one, prefaced his critique of Mīmāṃsā precisely with such a view:
Without any sense of shame, some deny that meditation and insight [constitute] the true way to deliverance. They insist that deliverance can only be achieved by rituals. They say that according to tradition there is no other correct way to deliverance than the rituals prescribed in the sacred texts., i.e. [rituals that involve] rice, cattle, butter and intercourse with one's spouse.[11]
Furthermore, Śaṅkara, clearly pointing to Kumārila, was even more explicit in understanding svarga as a competing account of liberation: “Or rather, liberation is a result just of ritual actions, since such ritual actions are the cause of unsurpassed happiness which is denoted by the word ‘heaven.’”[12]
Yet Kumārila himself, though read by his contemporaries and close successors as identifying heaven with liberation—Bhavya used the term apavarga and Śaṅkara mokṣa—explicitly declined to make that identification in the context of discussing mokṣa. “If you propose that liberation consists in enjoying happiness, then it would be equivalent to heaven and it would be perishable.”[13] “He who is after liberation and does not desire heaven, because heaven is bondage in nature…”[14] The identification also assails our sensibility to the idea of liberation: how can there be liberation when heaven is to be experienced in another body? Is not liberation precisely freedom from rebirth and embodiment? Let us leave this question for now and revisit it in the conclusion.
Footnotes and references:
[1]:
[2]:
Halbfass 1991:300-1.
[3]:
Ibid.
[4]:
Op.cit, 306.
[5]:
[6]:
“We will explain in the sixth book that heaven and hell can only be experienced in another place and life, owing to being unsurpassable felicity and suffering in nature, and not immediately after the performance of the ritual action.” svarga-narakau ca niratiśaya-sukha-duḥkhātmakatvād deśāntara-janmāntarānubhavanīyau na karmāntaraṃ sambhavata iti ṣaṣṭhādye vakṣyāmaḥ. Kumārila’s Tantra-Vārttika on Śabara’s Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra-Bhāṣya 2.1.5, I.397.
[7]:
Śaṅkara’s Pada-Bhāṣya on the Kena Upaniṣad 4.9, IV.76: anante aparyante svarge loke sukhātmake brahmaṇīty etat. anante iti viśeṣān na triviṣṭape ananta-śabdaḥ, Cf. Śaṅkara’s Vākya-Bhāṣya on the Kena Upaniṣad on the same (p.121): anante apāre avidyamānānte svarge loke sukha-prāye nirduḥkhātmani pare brahmaṇi. See also Gonda 1966:73-107. On Triviṣṭapa as the heaven of Indra, see Hopkins 1915:58-61.
[8]:
We know this from Kumārila’s opponent in Kumārila’s Tantra-Vārttika on Śabara’s Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra-Bhāṣya 2.1.5, whom he describes as nipunaṃ-manyāḥ, “fancying himself clever.” “Because heaven and hell are happiness and suffering in nature, they are experienced in this very lifetime, right after the performance of the ritual.” sukha-duḥkhātmakatvena samāneṣv eva janmasu. kriyānantaram eveha staḥ svarga-narakāv api. (IV.392) Kataoka (2011b) seems quite justified in proposing that this is Bharṭrmitra talking, Kumārila’s arch enemy if we believe Pārthasārathi under Kumārila’s Śloka-Vārttika Pratijña 10, where Kumārila says that Mīmāṃsā has been largely made mundane in the world and Pārthasārathi adds: bhartṛmitrādibhiḥ. On Bhartṛmitra see Nakamura (2004:170-73) and Pandey (1983:229-36).
[9]:
Under Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra attributed to Jaimini 1.1.2 (I.11, 13), Śabara described dharma as that category, consisting of sacrifices such as Jyotiṣṭoma, which relates man to the highest attainment, niḥśreyasa. so 'rthaḥ puruṣaṃ niḥśreyasena saṃyunakti; … ko 'rthaḥ? yo niḥśreyasāya jyotiṣṭomādiḥ.
[10]:
We saw it used in Manu Smṛti, but along with apavarga it was the favorite term of Naiyāyikas as well, as is evident from Vātsyāyana’s commentary on Nyāya-Sūtra of Gautama 1.1.1-2. See also Potter 1977:28-34.
[11]:
[12]:
athavā, niratiśayāyāḥ prīteḥ svarga-śabda-vācyāyā karma-hetutvāt karmabhya eva mokṣaḥ.—Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad Introduction.
[13]: