The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 2,886 pages of information about The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3.

The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 2,886 pages of information about The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3.

811.  The commentator explains that the object of this verse is to point out that the senses, when destroyed, merge into their productive causes or the substances of which they are attributes.  Of course, those causes or substances are the elements or primordial matter.  This leads to the inference that though attributes may meet with destruction, yet the substances (of which they are attributes) may remain intact.  This may save the Buddhist doctrine, for the Soul, being permanent and owing consciousness, etc., for its attributes, may outlive, like primordial matter, the destruction of its attributes.  But the speaker urges that this doctrine is not philosophical and the analogy will not hold.  Substance is conjunction of attributes.  The attributes being destroyed, the substance also is destroyed.  In European philosophy too, matter, as an unknown essence to which extension, divisibility, etc., inhere, is no longer believed in or considered as scientific.

812.  Here the speaker attacks the orthodox Brahmanical doctrine of the character of the Soul.

813.  Possibly because they art based on Revelation.

814.  The first five are the effects of intelligence; the vital breaths, of wind; and the juices and humours, of stomachic heat.

815.  Intelligence is called avyaya because it leads to Emancipation which is such.  It is also called mahat because of its power to lead to Brahma which is mahat.  Tattwanischaya is called the seed of Emancipation because it leads to Emancipation.

816.  That path consists of yoga.

817.  By casting off the mind one casts off the five organs of action.  By casting off the understanding, one casts off the organs of knowledge with the mind.

818. i.e., in each of these operations three causes must exist together.

819.  The inference is that the functions being destroyed, the organs are destroyed, and the mind also is destroyed, or, the mind being destroyed, all are destroyed.

820.  The commentator correctly explains that na in nanuparyeta is the nom. sing. of nri (man), meaning here, of course, the dreamer.  Nilakantha’s ingenuity is certainly highly commendable.

821.  Uparamam is yugapadbhavasya uchcchedam or extinction of the state of association of the Soul with the understanding, the mind, and the senses.  This dissociation of the Soul from the understanding, etc., is, of course, Emancipation.  Emancipation, however, being eternal, the temporary dissociation of the soul from the understanding, etc., which is the consequence of dreamless sleep, is the result of Tamas or Darkness.  That dissociation is certainly a kind of felicity, but then it differs from the felicity of Emancipation, which is everlasting, and which I is not experienced in the gross body.

822.  In this verse the speaker points out that the felicity of Emancipation may at first sight seem to be like the felicity of dreamless sleep, but that is only an error.  In reality, the former is untouched or unstained by darkness.  Na krichechramanupasyati is the reading I take, meaning “in which no one sees the slightest tincture of sorrow.”  The kind of sorrow referred to is the sorrow of duality or consciousness of knower and known.  In Emancipation, of course, there cannot be any consciousness of duality.  Both the vernacular versions are thoroughly unmeaning.

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The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.