5. The Model of Causality

Before moving to vidyā and its functioning, let us complete the story of the soteriological role of ritual, meditation and the āśrama practices. Śaṅkara said, as we saw, that they were “comparatively external” to knowledge. On a couple of occasions, he called ritual that consists of the daily Agnihotra ārād-upakāraka, a term with which we got acquainted in the Second Chapter. To refresh our memory, ārād-upakārakas were full-fledged rituals for which no separate results were directly stated, so by the application of the Mīmāṃsā principles of interpretation they were considered auxiliaries to other major rituals that were described in their textual vicinity. “That which on its own does not have a result but is in the proximity of something that does is considered its auxiliary.”^[1] In practice, they were smaller independent rituals performed before and after each of the two main rituals in a Darśa-pūrṇamāsa. We saw that Mīmāṃsakas thought these ārād-upakārakas produced some intermediate apūrva, whose causal contribution was absorbed in the apūrva of the respective principal fortnightly ritual that eventually mixed in the final apūrva. In terms of the attainment of heaven, the ārād-upakārakas were indirect means, because they served directly their principal rituals.

However, they got their name of ārād-upakāraka not through their indirect relation to heaven the result, but through their direct relation to the principal ritual they served, and in pair with the other type of non-principal actions, the sannipātyopakārakas, which I called “aggregated helpers” because their causal contribution was absorbed in a ritual auxiliary, namely the offertory. These were the four actions of production, acquisition, transformation, and refinement. They were all performed over a substance that was offered in a ritual—making the rice paddy, getting milk from the cow, melting solid butter, sprinkling the paddy—and their causal contribution to the principal action of offering was mediate, absorbed in the offertory. In Mīmāṃsā technical jargon, the ārād-upakārakas were direct helpers to the principal ritual, because there was no intermediary between the two, whereas the sannipatyopakarakas were indirect helpers because their immediate relation was to the material used for offering.

However, the sannipātyopakārakas expressed a closer relation to their superordinate material—there cannot be threshed rice without threshing—and one that is directly expressed in an injunction: vrīhin avahanti. The auxiliary full rituals, on the other hand, were not really required for the principal rite in a Darśa-pūrṇamāsa, except for the fact that they are described in proximity and not related to a result. Their relation to the principal rites were not introduced into being by a statement to that effect either, but through scriptural postulation, arthāpatti: if they are not related to the principal rites, they would be useless, and this compromises the validity of the Veda and is unwanted. Let us pay attention to these complex hierarchical relations: the auxiliary rituals are directly helping the principal ritual, but the relation is distant, accidental; the sannipātyopakārakas are helping the principal ritual indirectly, through their superordinate material, but their relation to their material is close, essential; both are indirect in relation to heaven, since their causal contribution terminates in the primary ritual either directly or indirectly, and only the primary ritual is directly related to heaven.

Now, Śaṅkara thought that ritual could be considered such a direct helper to knowledge because, under the circumstances we have discussed—accompanied by meditation and not related to its common result in the form of heaven—it would become fruitful by giving rise to knowledge through personal purification.

In this scenario, knowledge was the principal means that eventually brought about liberation:

–But liberation cannot be produced. How can you say that it is a product of ritual?–There is no such fault, because ritual is a direct helper. Ritual, bringing about knowledge, is figuratively called an indirect cause of liberation.^[2]

I should like to note here that ārād-upakāraka is commonly but mistakenly translated as “indirect helper” in scholarly literature. Both Thibaut and Gambhirananda mistranslate ārād-upakārakatvāt karmaṇaḥ in the above sentence as “Works, we reply, may subserve final release mediately,” and “work helps from distance (i.e., indirectly) in producing the result,” because the adverb ārād means both “directly” and “indirectly” and they wrongly relate ārād-upakāraka to liberation rather than knowledge, without appreciating the theological context of the argument.^[3]

We can now conclusively answer the question that we posed at the beginning of this part of the dissertation: how did Śaṅkara precisely look at the possibility of combining ritual with knowledge? One available relationship was that between a principal and an auxiliary, pradhāna and aṅga/śeṣa/guṇa, if the second was an essential element for the first insofar as without it, the whole complex would be impossible. Such was the case, for instance, with the relation of offertories to the action of offering: there cannot be an action of sacrifice without a sacrificial animal or an appropriate substitute. The sannipātyopakārakas expressed a similar close relationship to their superordinate material. Another available relationship, quite different, was that between two principal factors, in the manner of the two fortnightly rituals in a Darśa-pūraṇamāsa. These two scenarios exhausted the scope of what Vedāntins understood under the samuccaya relation. In either case, both elements were absolutely required for the success of the undertaking, and simultaneously so, either temporally or through the final combination of the respective apūrva in the transtemporal Self.

This Śaṅkara rejected in no ambiguous terms, and for several related reasons. The arising of knowledge just meant understanding that the results of ritual were transient; that one cannot win immortality by wealth, the necessary means of ritual; that the unmade cannot be won by the made. To continue performing ritual in such circumstances would be kind of schizophrenic, affirming what one is trying to negate. Besides, liberation was a visible result, and only the four sannipātyopakārakas produced visible results. None of them could so much as touch the eternal Self. And so on. We should note very well that Śaṅkara under this model of samuccaya rejects repeatedly the same analogy that we started with: ritual spiced with meditation is like sweet yoghurt or charmed poison. This analogy was, in fact, Bhartṛprapañca’s, who thought that it was the knowledge of the eternal non-dual Self, knowledge qua knowledge, that transubstantiates ritual from bondage to liberation.^[4] For Śaṅkara, however, samuccaya was the way in which meditation combines with ritual, not knowledge. It was meditation that transforms ritual, not knowledge of Brahman.

Another possibility was to treat ritual as an ārād-upakāraka, a direct but distant helper to knowledge, direct insofar as its contribution is not absorbed by some other causal factor first, but distant insofar as it is not required after it had given rise to knowledge. Furthermore, because there was no natural relation between ritual and knowledge, but one established through a postulated originative injunction as we saw in Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 3.4.27, there was no reason that knowledge, dispassion, could not arise through those āśrama practices that were knowledge in nature—mind and sense control—or through the grace of God, etc. Although the relation between ritual and knowledge was direct, it was not essential. Knowledge had such an essential relationship with the opposite of ritual, that is, with renunciation of all varṇāśrama duties except those that were renunciation in kind. Both ritual and renunciation of ritual had direct relationship to knowledge, but under different causal models. The first was an ārād-upakāraka, while Śaṅkara called the second, the ṣaṭ-sampatti complex, sannipātyopakārakas, essentially related to knowledge. This was so because without mind and sense control and a healthy dose of humility, knowledge—dispassion—was impossible.^[5] And, the first was related to liberation, the result of knowledge, mediately, through giving rise to knowledge which independently produces its own result, while the second, competent to give rise to knowledge, was necessary after such rise had taken place, and until the full understanding of unity (and even after, as we shall see in Chapter Nine).

Although Śaṅkara does not say as much, he clearly saw the relation of ritual with knowledge through the pāramparya model of ritual causality that we considered in the Second Chapter. This was, to remember, the model of termination of the direct causal contribution of any ritual element in its immediate effect, but reaching the final result through a chain of successive intermediate results. It was, for instance, the model through which the threshing of rice was absorbed in the rice as its effect, but nevertheless reached heaven through the rice, the rice paddy, and the offering. I suggested in the Second Chapter that it was Kumārila who developed the model on a full scale. In any given ritual, both models of causality were involved, of course, and so were they in the pursuit of liberation. Knowledge had renunciation of all varṇāśrama practices as its integral part, aṅga, and it could not be practiced without it. Ritual, meditation and the other varṇāśrama practices, on the other hand, culminated in their contribution to the arising of knowledge, specifically in dispassion, and reached liberation mediately. On this lower lever, nevertheless, ritual and “knowledge,” that is, saguṇa meditation based the Upaniṣadic vidyās, were related in a samuccaya manner, had no problem combining, but had to be performed without desire for their common results.

Although Śaṅkara referred elsewhere to the idea of pāramparya explicitly, the term which he used for ritual contributing indirectly to liberation was the adverbial praṇāḍyā, which we may read as its synonym.^[6] Sureśvara, on the other hand, as we saw in the introduction, laid out the full journey to liberation through a succession of stages in which the performance of ritual as the starting point and an ārād-upakāraka mediately culminates in liberation through a pāramparya chain.^[7] From this point on, Advaitins begin talking about knowledge and ritual as means of liberation under the mode of sākṣāt-pāramparyābhyām, directly and mediately, respectively.^[8] It is worthwhile pointing to Śureśvara’s inimitable wit in the way he described the transition from the renunciation of ritual and all varṇāśrama practices to the sole engagement in knowledge. Renunciation was like the sampatti or sampradāna ritual that we talked about in the previous chapter, the means of winning this world, when the dying father transferred his own ritual self to his son, to continue sacrificing vicariously through him.^[9] We can almost visualize ritual on its deathbed, whispering to knowledge: “I have done all that I could. Now you carry on.”

Of crucial importance was that this pāramparya chain of soteriological causality extended through lifetimes, and it was perfectly possible for one to have achieved the requisite mental purity by doing ritual and observing the āśrama practices in a previous life, in which case one was supposed to renounce and engage in brahma-vidyā immediately after student life. The litmus test was dispassion. Once dispassion was achieved, ritual had nothing more to contribute.^[10] Padmapāda, in fact, claimed that this was why inquiry into Brahman did not have to be preceded by the inquiry into dharma. One may have done that in a previous life and gotten all that one could get.^[11]

We should also note that, as John Taber had recognized, the inquiry into Brahman to Śaṅkara’s mind could not be fruitful without the four prerequisites being satisfied, that is, without knowledge having arisen.^[12] Śaṅkara, in fact, said as much at the beginning of the prose part of the Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī If the teacher recognizes signs that the student does not “grasp knowledge,” he should send him to remedial lessons on sense and mind control and humility.^[13]

Padmapāda was even more explicit about it:

If somehow—by the will of providence or by curiosity or the desire for much learning—the inquiry is undertaken [without the four prerequisites satisfied in succession], one will not be able to understand without doubts that Brahman is the Self, because without obtaining the means enumerated, his mind, not tuned inward, will be engrossed only in the external.^[14]

We will end this chapter by noting that the status of direct helpers given to ritual meant that the knowledge passages of the Upaniṣads and the meditation and ritual texts could form a unity of independent texts: they did not require one another syntactically, but there was a way to combine them through the vividiṣā, the desire to know the Self, in a unity of purpose. Kumārila called this vākyaikavākyatā, unity of independent texts, distinct from the more common syntactic sentential unity or padaikavākyatā.^[15] And, the result of such intertextual unity was that the integral Veda, without the explicitly kāmya portions that could not be repurposed, was for liberation, as I hinted at the end of the last chapter. This is the big takeaway from this chapter for our ultimate, mahā-vākya, purpose. The whole of the ritual portion of the Veda, with the sole exception of the parts dealing with optional rituals (kāmya), is employed through absorption in this knowledge of Brahman.^[16]

As for the ritual portion of the Veda being auxiliary to the meaning of the knowledge portion, that is a case of unity of independent passages occasioned by a text that establishes a principal-auxiliary relation.^[17]

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

phalavat sannidhāv aphalaṃ tad-aṅgaṃ bhavati. Śabara’s Bhāṣya on the Mīmāṃsā-Sūtra 4.4.19, IV.1277.

[2]:

nanu anārabhyo mokṣaḥ, katham asya karma-kāryatvam ucyate? naiṣa doṣaḥ, ārād-upakārakatvāt karmaṇaḥ. jñānasyaiva hi prāpakaṃ sat karma praṇāḍyā mokṣa-kāraṇam ity upacaryate. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 4.1.16, III.792.

[3]:

Equally wrong, it seems to me, are Alston and Balasubramanian in their respective translations of the Naiṣkarmya-Siddhi; understanding the Vedānta use of ārād-upakāraka requires appreciating its Mīmāṃsā context.

[4]:

Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.22; Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad 1.11.4.

[5]:

atha evaṃ sati avidvad-viṣayāṇām āśrama-karmaṇāṃ balābala-vicāraṇāyām, ātma-jñānotpādanaṃ prati yama-pradhānānām amānitvādīnāṃ mānasānāṃ ca dhyāna-jñāna-vairāgyādīnāṃ sannipatyopakāratvam. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.5.15, IX.676.

[6]:

Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 4.1.16.

[7]:

Sureśvara’s Naiṣkarmya-Siddhi 1.45-52.

[8]:

See, for instance, the commentaries on Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 4.1.16, particularly Ānandagiri: “Treating the sūtra as being about nirguṇa-vidyā, knowledge and action are a means of liberation directly and mediately, like the plow and eating are the means of living;” nirguṇa-vidyā-viṣayatvaṃ sūtrasyopetya lāṅgala-bhojanayor jīvana-hetutā-vad dhī-karmaṇoḥ sākṣāt-pāramparyābhyāṃ mokṣa-hetutvam.

[9]:

Sureśvara’s Naiṣkarmya-Siddhi 1.49.

[10]:

“Action characterized by Agnihotra and by celibacy and the like, performed in a previous life, facilitates the arising of knowledge such that some are evidently dispassionate from very birth.” Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad 1.11.4.

[11]:

na ca naiyogike phale kāla-niyamo ‘sti. tena pūrva-janmānuṣṭhita-karma-saṃskṛto dharma-jijñāsāṃ tad-anuṣṭhānaṃ cāpratipadyamāna eva brahma-jijñāsāyāṃ pravartata iti na niyamena tad-apeṣko ‘tha-śabdo yujyate. “There is no rule when actions will bear fruit. One may have been purified by performed actions in a past life that bear fruit now; if so, inquiry into dharma is unnecessary, and so it cannot be the consequence that 'atha' would refer to.” Padmapāda’s Pañca-Pādikā, p.61.

[12]:

Taber 1983.

[13]:

śiṣyasya jñānāgrahaṇaṃ ca liṅgair buddhvā tad-agrahaṇa-hetūn adharma-laukika-pramāda-nityānitya-vastu-viveka-viṣayāsaṃjāta-dṛḍha-pūrva-śrutatva-loka-cintāvekṣaṇa-jātyādy-abhimānādīṃs tat-pratipakṣaiḥ śruti-smṛti-vihitair apanayed akroddhādibhir ahiṃsādibhiś ca yamair jñānāviruddhaiś ca niyamaiḥ. amānitvādi-guṇaṃ ca jñānopāyaṃ samyag grāhayet. Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 1:4-5.

[14]:

kathaṃcid vā daiva-vaśāt kutūhalād vā bahu-śrutatva-buddhyā vā pravṛtto ‘pi na nirvicikitsaṃ brahmātmatvenāvagantuṃ yathokta-sādhana-sampatti-virahāt anantar-mukha-cetā bahir evābhiniviśamānaḥ. Padmapāda’s Pañca-Pādikā, p.63.

[15]:

See Kunjunni Raja 1977 161-2.

[16]:

Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.22.

[17]:

jñāna-kāṇḍārtha-śeṣatvaṃ karma-kaṇḍasya yat punaḥ |
viniyojaka-hetv etat tayor vākyaikavākyataḥ ||—Sureśvara’s Sambandha-Vārttika 278.

The viniyojaka text that establishes the principal-subordinate relation of independent items is the vividiṣā text, Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.22.