Yoga as philosophy and religionDasgupta, Surendranath
Religion
Yoga as philosophy and religion
Dasgupta, Surendranath
Hindu philosophy; Patañjali; Yoga
These vāsanās are, however, beginningless, for a baby just after birth
is seen to feel the fear of death instinctively, and it could not have
derived it from its experience in this life. Again, if a small baby is
thrown upwards, it is seen to shake and cry like a grown-up man, and
from this it may be inferred that it is afraid of falling down on the
ground and is therefore shaking through fear. Now this baby has never
learnt in this life from experience that a fall on the ground will cause
pain, for it has never fallen on the ground and suffered pain therefrom;
so the cause of this fear cannot be sought in the experiences of this
life, but in the memory of past experiences of fall and pain arising
therefrom, which is innate in this life as vāsanā and causes this
instinctive fear. So this innate memory which causes instinctive fear of
death from the very time of birth, has not its origin in this life but
is the memory of the experience of some previous life, and in that life,
too, it existed as innate memory of some other previous life, and in
that again as the innate memory of some other life and so on to
beginningless time. This goes to show that the vāsanās are without
beginning.
We come now to the question of unigenitality—ekabhavikatva—of the
karmāśaya and its exceptions. We find that great confusion has occurred
among the commentators about the following passage in the _Bhāshya_
which refers to this subject: The _Bhāshya_ according to Vācaspati in
II. 13 reads: _tatra dṛshṭajanmavedanīyasya niyatavipākasya_, etc. Here
Bhikshu and Nāgeśa read _tatrādṛshṭajanmavedanīyasya niyatavipākasya_,
etc. There is thus a divergence of meaning on this point between
_Yoga-vārttika_ and his follower Nāgeśa, on one side, and Vācaspati on
the other.
Vācaspati says that the dṛshṭajanmavedanīya (to be fructified in the
same visible life) karma is the only true karma where the karmāśaya is
ekabhavika, unigenital, for here these effects are positively not due to
the karma of any other previous lives, but to the karma of that very
life. Thus these are the only true causes of ekabhavika karmāśaya.
Thus according to Vācaspati we see that the adṛshṭajanmavedanīya karma
(to be fructified in another life) of unappointed fruition is never an
ideal of ekabhavikatva or unigenital character; for it may have three
different courses: (1) It may be destroyed without fruition. (2) It may
become merged in the ruling action. (3) It may exist for a long time
overpowered by the ruling action whose fruition has been appointed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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