The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja: Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48
Religion
The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja: Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48
Vedanta
The Pûrvapakshin maintains that the Pradhâna is meant. For he says, the
Chândogya text quoted expresses the causal state of what is denoted by
the word 'this', viz. the aggregate of things comprising manifold
effects, such as ether, &c., consisting of the three elements of
Goodness, Passion and Darkness, and forming the sphere of fruition of
intelligent beings. By the 'effected' state we understand the assuming,
on the part of the causal substance, of a different condition; whatever
therefore constitutes the essential nature of a thing in its effected
state the same constitutes its essential nature in the causal state also.
Now the effect, in our case, is made up of the three elements Goodness,
Passion and Darkness; hence the cause is the Pradhâna which consists in
an equipoise of those three elements. And as in this Pradhâna all
distinctions are merged, so that it is pure Being, the Chândogya text
refers to it as 'Being, one only, without a second.' This establishes
the non-difference of effect and cause, and in this way the promise that
through the knowledge of one thing all things are to be known admits of
being fulfilled. Otherwise, moreover, there would be no analogy between
the instance of the lump of clay and the things made of it, and the
matter to be illustrated thereby. The texts speaking of the origination
of the world therefore intimate the Pradhâna taught by the great Sage
Kapila. And as the Chândogya passage has, owing to the presence of an
initial statement (pratijñâ) and a proving instance, the form of an
inference, the term 'Being' means just that which rests on inference,
viz. the Pradhâna.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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