Sāṃkhya and yoga are normally discussed either as topics in philosophy or as subjects of historical and philological inquiry. In this paper, I will attempt to demonstrate that, before separate developments appeared in the areas of both sāṃkhya and yoga, at least some brahmins seemed to have espoused the idea that any physical exertion or harnessing to a specific task had to be preceded by an intellectual approach to reality and possibly by a thorough enumeration of its principles. I come (...) at this question from three different angles. I first analyze Kapila’s actions in the Sagara episode. The double presence of a yogācārya and a sāṃkhyācārya in certain cosmogonies provides a second approach to the question. The third angle will be a study of the significance of a coordinated emphasis on kratu and dakṣa in the Vedic context. These apparently disconnected themes actually point in a single direction, and they contribute to an understanding of sāṃkhya and yoga as linked together as a binary pair of complementary attitudes. (shrink)

This paper shall make an attempt to critically reflect on the conceptualization of emotions in the Indian Philosophical systems. To bring out the insight, the paper is divided into three main sections. The first section of the paper entitled ‘The Body-Emotions-Mind Complex and the Question of Self: Understanding the Dualistic Tradition’ will make an analysis of emotions and the mind-body complex vis-à-vis the question of self or consciousness in Indian Philosophy with special reference to the study of Advaita Vedānta and (...) the philosophical position of Upaniṣadic teachings. It will also incorporate the Nyāya account of emotions in the Indian philosophical system. The second section of the paper is entitled as ‘Triguṇa and the Emotional Experience: A Perspective in Sāṃkhya Philosophy’. It will reflect on the systematic presentation of Sāṃkhya philosophical system on account of its relation between the two ontological realities — puruṣa and prakṛti. It is this prakṛti which is constituted of the three guṇas — sattva, rajas and tamas; and therefore is the embodied self having its association with emotions. The third section of the paper entitled ‘Understanding Religious Emotions: Towards a Positive Representation of Emotions in Indian Philosophy’ will make an attempt to critically reflect on the necessary shift required in conceptualizing emotions in the Indian Philosophical systems. That is to say, from a negative connotation of emotions to a more significant positive account of emotions in human-spiritual life. This necessary shift will be directed towards the understanding of Religious Emotions — faith and devotion which can serve as a guiding principle to justify the soteriological approach of Indian Philosophy, i.e. towards pure consciousness. Thereby the paper shall explore the consideration of the relevance of emotions in the Indian Philosophical System. (shrink)

This paper announces the first critical edition of Abhinavagupta’s commentary on the Bhagavadgītā in its Kashmirian recension, based on one Kashmirian Devanāgarī and seven Śāradā manuscripts in addition to two existing non-critical editions. The volume will also include a new edition of the Kashmirian recension of the Bhagavadgītā and a full French translation. After a short presentation of Abhinavagupta’s commentary and a discussion of previous work on the subject, the manuscripts used are listed and briefly described. The question and importance (...) of the Kashmirian recension of the Bhagavadgītā and problems of its edition are discussed in detail, with several textual examples. In order to give a sample of the Gītārthasaṃgraha’s contents, some of Abhinavagupta’s remarkable interpretations are also highlighted, in particular tantric or esoteric ones. An Appendix deals with the closely related question of Bhāskara the Vedāntin, his date, his provenance and the Gītā recension he probably used for his commentary. (shrink)

Christopher Framarin has spent many years analyzing the problem of niṣkama karma or desireless action in Indian philosophy as evidenced by his many papers on the topic. The results of these papers are gathered into his book, Desire and Motivation in Indian Philosophy, which presents a sustained defense of the doctrine from multiple perspectives. Its philosophical depth and sophisticated argument notwithstanding, Framarin's work is lucid, persuasive, and well-executed. Framarin sets up the basic problem in the introduction and then proceeds to (...) test various interpretive responses. As he develops the book, he shows why each of these responses fails before presenting his own solution. The inquiry into non-viable .. (shrink)

Though scholarship on diverse methods of yoga in the Indian traditions abounds, there has not been sufficient research that examines the traditions of yoga in the purāṇas. The present paper explores yoga articulated in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa and argues that what seems like a unified teaching is a composite of an eight-limbed yoga embedded within an instruction on proto-Sāṃkhya. An evaluation of the key elements of yoga as developed in this text as a whole, clarifies our understanding of the emergence (...) of yoga and its relationship to epic formulations on the one hand and to the Classical System of the Yogasūtras of Patañjali on the other. (shrink)

This handbook brings together a distinguished team of scholars from philosophy, theology, and religious studies to provide the first in-depth discussion of Vedanta and the many different systems of thought that make up this tradition of Indian philosophy. Emphasizing the historical development of Vedantic thought, it includes chapters on numerous classical Vedantic philosophies as well as the modern Vedantic views of Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo, and Romain Rolland. The volume offers careful hermeneutic analyses of how Vedantic texts have been interpreted, (...) and it addresses key issues and debates in Vedanta, including religious diversity, the nature of God, and the possibility of embodied liberation. Venturing into cross-philosophical and cross-cultural territory, it also brings Vedanta into dialogue with Saiva Nondualism as well as contemporary Western analytic philosophy. Highlighting current scholarly controversies and charting new paths of inquiry, this is an indispensable research guide for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of Vedanta and Indian philosophy. (shrink)

The study of philosophical terms and doctrines in the Mahābhārata touches not only on important aspects of the contents, composition and the historical contexts of the epic, but also on the historiography of Indian philosophy. General ideas about the textual history of the epic and the distinction between “didactic” and “narrative” parts have influenced the study of epic philosophy no less than academic discussions about what is philosophy in India and how it developed. This results in different evaluations of the (...) place of philosophical texts in the epic and their relationship to the history of Indian philosophy. While some scholars have suggested that there is a “philosophy of the epic” its composers wished to propagate, others have argued that “philosophy” is included in the epic either in a “proto” form or in a variety of doctrines they deemed relevant. The article discusses these views and some of the heuristic assumptions on which they are based. It proposes to widen the scope of analysis by paying more attention to the interplay of narrative and didactic passages, the various ways in which philosophy is presented in the epic, and its connection to a larger spectrum of the reception of philosophy in textual genres and by audiences outside the expert circles of the philosophical schools. (shrink)

We analyze and interpret the Bhagavad Gītā from the point of view of decision theory. Arjuna asks Krishna for help in his decision of whether to fight or not. Broadly speaking, Arjuna prefers consequentialist arguments, while Krishna stresses the warrior’s svadharma. In doing so, Krishna can be considered to suggest a “new” twist on the standard decision model, in line with reason-based theories of choice. We also argue that Krishna’s svadharmic point of view can fruitfully be seen as an example (...) of the Rational Shortlist Method. (shrink)

The paper discusses the issue of the confrontation of the Bhagavadgītā with some aspects of the early Buddhist doctrine as presented in the Pāli canon. The confrontation points to the Bhagavadgītā as being a poem of the orthodox current of Indian religious thought, which also contains some polemical elements, these mostly addressed to the most powerful heterodox religious current in the first centuries B.C.. Several parts of the famous Sanskrit poem are compared and confronted with the respective parts of the (...) Pāli canon in order to demonstrate, firstly, the different approaches of both currents, mostly in ethics and metaphysics, and secondly, the Bhagavadgītā’s reaction to particular elements of early Buddhism. The first six chapters of the Sanskrit poem have been subjected to analysis in this respect. (shrink)

This paper identifies the different normative ethical arguments stated and suggested by Arjuna and Krishna in the Gītā , analyzes those arguments, examines the interrelations between those arguments, and demonstrates that, contrary to a common view, both Arjuna and Krishna advance ethical theories of a broad consequentialist nature. It is shown that Krishna’s ethical theory, in particular, is a distinctive kind of rule-consequentialism that takes as intrinsically valuable the twin consequences of mokṣa and lokasaṃgraha . It is also argued that (...) Krishna’s teachings in the Gītā gain in depth, coherence, and critical relevance what they lose in simplicity when the ethical theory underlying those teachings is understood as a consequentialism of this kind rather than as a deontology. (shrink)

Though the Bhagavadgītā or Gītā is one of the important sourcebooks of Indian philosophy and religion, or rather of Hindu philosophy and religion, its date, authorship, textual formation, teaching, etc. are still debatable among the scholars—oriental and occidental. While supports in this regard can be garnered from both ancient and modern sources, they too seem to be inconclusive and contradictory. Thus, this paper, while analysing these debatable points regarding this text, taking into consideration both textual sources and modern scholars’ views, (...) concludes that, in order to have an unbiased attitude and its true import at large, the text is to be viewed and read scrupulously from its literary need and historicity. (shrink)

This paper examines the puruṣa concept in the Caraka Saṃhitā, an early text of Ayurveda, and its relation to Indic thinking about phenomenal worldhood. It argues that, contrary to the usual interpretation, early Ayurveda does not consider the person to be a microcosmic replication of the macrocosmos. Instead, early Ayurveda asserts that personhood is worldhood, and thus the person is non-different from the phenomenal totality of his existence. This is confirmed by the CS’s several definitions of puruṣa, which are alternately (...) posed in terms familiar to Vaiśeṣika, early Sāṃkhya, early Buddhism, and Upaniṣadic monism. It is likewise confirmed by the Ayurvedic logic of sāmānya, which governs the meaning of the list of person-to-world correspondences in CS 4.5 and its often misinterpreted claim, puruṣo’yam lokasaṃmitaḥ. Finally it is confirmed in the program of Ayurvedic therapeutics, which aims at establishing various kinds of “appropriateness” for the sake of effecting samayoga—the “harmonious joining” of person and world. (shrink)

The concept of the mahant- ātman-, or “vast self”, found in some of the Early and Middle Upaniṣads, has, at least since the days of Hermann Oldenberg, been explored by a number of scholars, most notably by van Buitenen :103–114, 1964). These studies have usually emphasized the cosmic implications of this concept; the vast ātman- being the non-individualized spirit that brings forth and pervades the universe, then enters the bodies of all created beings as their animating principle. As such it (...) precedes the mahān, or mahat, of the Sāṃkhya philosophy. The present paper argues that the concept of a mahant- puruṣa- or “vast person”, appearing parallel to the vast ātman in these texts, is in fact older, being traceable to Middle Vedic texts; the emergence of the Upaniṣadic ātman doctrine has eventually led to its replacement by the mahān ātmā. Originally, it is argued, the adjective mahant- stressed the difference between this “vast” puruṣa, who is said to dwell in the sun, and the minute puruṣa within man, who is seen as the tiny “person” in one’s pupil, or resides in the heart, having the size of a thumb. In contradistinction to the ātman, the puruṣa is a thoroughly anthropomorphic soul-concept, a “person” within the person. The ultimate identity between this tiny soul-person and the puruṣa in the sun is a recurring, but little studied, motif in the micro-macrocosmic speculations of the Brāhmaṇa texts. This “vast”, solar puruṣa is sometimes identified with the Puruṣa or primeval man of Ṛgveda 10.90, from whose body the universe was formed, and much of the imagery surrounding the vast puruṣa of Middle and Late Vedic literature seems to derive from this hymn. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, by comparing certain passages from the early Buddhist sūtras and the Mahābhārata , we can find evidence of a late- to post-Vedic “Brahmanical synthesis,” centered on the conception of Brahmā as both supreme Creator God and ultimate goal for transcending saṃsāra , that for the most part did not become a part of the Brahmanical synthesis or syntheses that came to constitute classical Hinduism. By comparing the Buddhist response to this early conception of Brahmā (...) with the way in which Brahmā is treated in certain sectarian portions of the Mahābhārata , I then argue further that the Buddhist critique of Brahmā as supreme deity was in part conceded by the Brahmanical tradition, and sectarian accounts of supreme godhead sought to reconcile pravṛtti and nivṛtti values more subtly than the crude juxtaposition offered by the earlier Brahmanical synthesis offered by Brahmā. The result was that Brahmā was relegated to an inferior position as a fully saṃsāric demiurge, a narrative found first in certain parts of the Mahābhārata and then continued throughout most of the Purāṇas. (shrink)

As terms, “Yoga” and “Zen” are as ubiquitous as they are banal. They float, freely, empty of any real meaning. Just about anything could be, Zen; in the same way that, just about anything could be, Yoga. In a closed loop, one might even define “Yoga” as “like Zen” or “Zen” to be a form of “Yoga.” However, in various ways, they are forged into a new hybrid. The marketing of syncretic, yoga-inflected Buddhist temple tourist options in and around Kyoto, (...) Japan, demonstrates how “Zen+Yoga” hybrids have become trans-glocal phenomena stretching between London and Sydney. Why does the Zen+Yoga hybrid seem to receive less criticism than other X+Yoga hybrids, such as Goat+Yoga, Beer+Yoga, SUP+Yoga, Death Metal+Yoga, Dog+Yoga, and, to a lesser extent, Hot+Yoga? A significant part of the Zen+Yoga hybrid’s ability to heretically seal itself from criticism is due to the institutionalized religious capital that schools of Zen Buddhism have. Even though the other X+Yoga hybrids rely on similar discursive and haptic logics, they are unconstrained by tradition and institution, unlike Zen. While all hybrids are novel branding attempts for attention from within a thoroughly saturated wellness tourism market, syncretic X+Yoga hybrids are not new. Neither are they universally accepted as heretical cultural appropriations. The common assumption regarding the commensurability of Zen and Yoga practices at epistemological, ontological, and soteriological levels is challenged. As well as, the social, political, and economic realities of tourism and temples are analyzed. This is based on 2 years of ethnographic and specific media content analysis regarding Japan’s yogascapes. This paper focuses the discussion on Tera Yoga. (shrink)

The account of the conversation between King Janaka and the Ṛṣi Pañcaśikha on the fate of the individual after death is one of the philosophical texts that are included in the Mokṣadharmaparvan of the Mahābhārata. There are different scholarly views on the history and composition of the text as well as the philosophical teachings propagated by Pañcaśikha. In contrast to earlier studies this paper not only analyzes the whole text, but also pays attention to the narrative framework in which the (...) philosophical discourse is embedded. In the text Bhīṣma functions as an external narrator, who relates and interprets the conversation as well as characterizes the protagonists and thereby influences the ways in which text is received by the audience. It is argued that it is important to deal with the interplay between the narrative and the philosophical discourse that is narrated, when analysing the philosophical positions that are either refuted or accepted in the text. 12.211–12 is not only a philosophical text, but also a tale about philosophical discourse in general and about how Sāṃkhya philosophy is taught to a non-expert audience. Seen from this perspective the text is significant for the way in which philosophical terms and issues are dealt with in the epic and adjacent non-expert texts, such as the Purāṇas. (shrink)

Joshua Anderson argues that Amartya Sen’s reading of the Bhagavadgītā is not accurate and so it cannot serve as an example of Sen’s comprehensive consequentialism. This article presents Sen’s reading of the Bhagavadgītā and Anderson’s criticisms of Sen’s readings. It discusses three types of readers: history readers, activist readers, and interventionist readers. It gives an interventionist reading of the Bhagavadgītā, supplementing Arjuna’s reasons and contesting those of Kṛṣṇa. It shows that Arjuna’s reasons are cogent and it respectfully argues that Kṛṣṇa’s (...) arguments are incomplete and unconvincing. Even if Arjuna’s reasons are not ultimately decisive, they legitimately feature in his deliberations. It responds to Anderson, urging that Sen correctly advocates comprehensive consequentialism and agent-relativity, rather than cumulative outcomes and agent-neutrality, and that Sen correctly sees these contrasts exemplified in the Bhagavadgītā. It concludes with a discussion of the impartial spectator, kin,.. (shrink)

This paper pursues precise information on the use of the Sanskrit word buddhi, “the intellect,” in the context of epic adhyātma discourse. The term buddhi makes its debut in this genre of discourse in texts of the Mahābhārata’s Mokṣadharmaparvan before going on to become a central term of classical Sāṃkhya philosophy. This paper examines closely the presence and role of the “intellect” in the argument of the Manubṛhaspatisaṃvāda, a text that is unusually rich in its theorizing and description of the (...) intellect. But this text is not primarily about the intellect, even if that organ plays a prominent role in the three main phases of the text’s teaching. The Manu-Bṛhaspati is a major, deliberately constructed body of teaching on ethics, ontology, and psychology, and what it says regarding the buddhi is embedded in those teachings, usually, but not always, incidentally. This paper tries to grasp those teachings in their particular idiom and present Manu’s teachings on the buddhi in the natural progression and settings of the overall argument. A number of points comparing the buddhi in this text to the adhyātma text-pair of MBh 12.187/239–41 are made and a striking contrast between Manu’s buddhi and the ‘saving buddhis’ of the early Mokṣadharma is discussed briefly. The main points regarding the buddhi in Manu’s teachings turn out to be: First, and most importantly, the buddhi has the ability not only to see and “resolve” current sensory experience coming from the senses and the mind, but to store those sensations and re-arrange and re-interpret them outside of ‘real time’. This ‘trans-temporal depth’ of the buddhi may be the reason for the second major fact about it, that the buddhi is the locus in a person from which that person’s residual energy from past deeds operates; the buddhi transmits that energy and its qualitative differentiations into the mind and the senses, entities that derive from it and operate “below” it. Third, the buddhi’s ability to select and arrange past perceptions and imagine not previously observed arrangements among them is the source of its fatefully erroneous substitution of the immediately present, phenomenal self of experience for the transcendent true Self. Fourth, the buddhi’s ability to imagine and re-interpret experience makes it the principal faculty for determining the truth of things that are not immediately apparent to the senses. Establishing the existence of the transcendent soul is the most important such truth, for that serves as the foundation for one’s eventually coming to see the true Self. Fifth, the buddhi works with the main perceptual organ, the mind, to clarify and then neutralize the operation of the senses, allowing yoga meditation to go forward. In the course of yoga meditation, when the buddhi is emptied of karma energy, the buddhi becomes “tantamount to the manas” and the ultimate reality is “seen, as if it were a streak of gold on a touchstone,” undoing the buddhi’s fateful error. Sixth, a point stressed in several places in the text, is that the entire embodied soul, which is basically led by the buddhi, is tremendously energetic in its rush down to the physical reality. It is not clear whether some of this energy is part of the original emanation of the principle of the embodied soul from the Absolute, but it is clear that some of it is the energy of karma stored in the “intellect.”. (shrink)

The word buddhi is an important term of Indian philosophical discourse, but some aspects of its use have caused confusion and continue to occasion difficulties. This paper undertakes a survey of the usage of the word buddhi in general Sanskrit literature from its earliest late Vedic occurrences up to the middle of the first millennium CE. Signifying fundamentally “awareness,” the word “buddhi” is shown to refer often to a being’s persisting capacity or faculty of awareness and also, often, to the (...) content of a being’s awareness. There are also instances where it is hard to determine which of these two kinds of reference are intended in our written sources, and there are other instances where both senses seem present simultaneously. Various examples attest to the use of the word to refer to an affective and volitional capacity in a being—and to affective and volitional content—as well as to a cognitive faculty and cognitive content. One feature that occurs frequently in the word’s use is that this faculty and, or, its content, regularly describe alterations of a subject’s knowledge of the surrounding situation, the transformation of surrounding complexity or multiplicity into a simpler and more manageable mental construct—an understanding, an interpretation, a decision, a plan, etc. As the word buddhi is related to the primary Sanskrit word-family used to describe the concrete experience of awakening—moving from no awareness to clear awareness—it is not surprising that its more abstract usage would often incorporate a similar dynamic, a transition from less clear to more clear knowledge, a rendering of early knowledge to better and more useful knowledge, in short, a faculty of “intellect” that produces refined decisions, resolutions, and determinations. It is suggested that this element of its semantic profile contributed to the word’s eventually becoming the preferred word for the most important of the mental functions of beings in one of the most widespread philosophical psychologies of ancient India, that which ultimately became formally enshrined in the philosophical system “Sāṃkhya.”. (shrink)

The word buddhi is an important term of Indian philosophical discourse, but some aspects of its use have caused confusion and continue to occasion difficulties. This paper undertakes a survey of the usage of the word buddhi in general Sanskrit literature from its earliest late Vedic occurrences up to the middle of the first millennium CE. Signifying fundamentally “awareness,” the word “buddhi” is shown to refer often to a being’s persisting capacity or faculty of awareness and also, often, to the (...) content of a being’s awareness. There are also instances where it is hard to determine which of these two kinds of reference are intended in our written sources, and there are other instances where both senses seem present simultaneously. Various examples attest to the use of the word to refer to an affective and volitional capacity in a being—and to affective and volitional content—as well as to a cognitive faculty and cognitive content. One feature that occurs frequently in the word’s use is that this faculty and, or, its content, regularly describe alterations of a subject’s knowledge of the surrounding situation, the transformation of surrounding complexity or multiplicity into a simpler and more manageable mental construct—an understanding, an interpretation, a decision, a plan, etc. As the word buddhi is related to the primary Sanskrit word-family used to describe the concrete experience of awakening—moving from no awareness to clear awareness—it is not surprising that its more abstract usage would often incorporate a similar dynamic, a transition from less clear to more clear knowledge, a rendering of early knowledge to better and more useful knowledge, in short, a faculty of “intellect” that produces refined decisions, resolutions, and determinations. It is suggested that this element of its semantic profile contributed to the word’s eventually becoming the preferred word for the most important of the mental functions of beings in one of the most widespread philosophical psychologies of ancient India, that which ultimately became formally enshrined in the philosophical system “Sāṃkhya.”. (shrink)

Panentheism has seen a revival over the past two decades in the philosophical literature. This has partially triggered an interest in Indian models of God, which have traditionally been seen as panentheistic. On the other hand, panentheism has been often associated with panpsychism, an old ontological view that sees consciousness as fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world and which has also enjoyed a renaissance in recent decades. Depending on where one places fundamentality (whether on the microlevel or on the (...) cosmic-level) there will be two types of panpsychism: micropsychism and cosmopsychism. Despite the apparently rich connection between Indian traditions and panpsychism, especially in its cosmopsychist version, recent work within cross-cultural analytic philosophy of mind seems to be mostly focused on atheistic traditions, such as Advaita Vedānta and Buddhism. My goal in this paper is to contribute to the cross-cultural debate over panentheism and Indian models of God, as well as to the debate on the connections between panpsychism, cosmopsychism and Indian traditions, by examining one of the most important and often quoted texts in Indian religious and philosophical traditions: the theistic Bhavagad Gītā. From a more specific standpoint, the paper has a threefold goal: to offer a panentheistic reconstruction of the Gītā’s concept of God, to show how this panentheistic model of God entails a form of theistic cosmopsychism, and to locate the Gītā’s cosmopsychism within a broader map of cosmopsychist views. Based on this reconstructive analysis of the Gītā’s cosmopsychism, I also outline some few reflections on the philosophical prospects of theistic cosmopsychism. (shrink)

In this article I provide an overview of the identity, role and function of sacred texts in Hinduism. Hinduism’s tremendous diversity extends to the numerous ways in which different types of texts have been identified as sacred and used by Hindu practitioners. It would be a mistake to attempt to summarise the role of sacred texts in the lives of Hindus, since different texts have had different roles and performed different functions. In the following, therefore, I address what I identify (...) as the four major types or categories of sacred text in Hinduism independently of each other, while noting the commonalities they share, and some of the ways in which texts belonging to the different categories have engaged with one another. The first three of the four categories of text I address consist of Sanskrit works, and the names of the categories are Sanskrit terms which have been applied by Hindus to their own literature (Veda/Śruti; Smṛti; Tantra, Āgama and Stotra). In the final section, I depart from using “insider” terminology and address “sacred texts in vernacular languages”. (shrink)