Central Ideas of Samkhya
Topic: Explain and critically evaluate the central ideas of Samkhya.
The Hindu Orthodox school of Samkhya’s main concern is the operation and physical nature of the cosmos and, therefore, the nature of cause and effect. Samkhya is a dualist philosophy because it divides the nature of the cosmos into two separate cosmic categories, which are both forms of ultimate reality, namely purusha and prakriti. According to Samkhya, purusha is pure consciousness and prakriti is the physical matter of existence from which everything is made; this necessitates that both realities must co-exist and be eternal. Samkhya believes that variants in forms of matter are the result of eternal interaction of the three aspects, or gunas, of prakriti: sattva, rajas and tamas.
Cause and effect are, by definition, interrelated. The Samkhya school does not debate this but is concerned with which came first, the chicken (the cause) or the egg (the effect). Samkhya believes the egg did and that hence the effect of a cause comes first. Its supposition that cause exists derives from the idea that the effect of the existence of the world could not have been produced without the pre-existence of its cause. It argues that causality is simply a shifting of the existing eternal material of the prakriti into different forms. Therefore, Samkhya argues that causes and effects are essentially the same, differing only in the forms they take, concluding that effect necessarily pre-exists within cause. Furthermore, as John M. Koller states, ‘… that which is absolutely nonexistent cannot have a cause.’ (Koller 55, 57)
I disagree with this Samkhya theory. It seems logical to me that cause comes before effect because the effect of life is observably death, and that the cause of life is life itself, so in order for death to exist, life has to exist first. Applying this same reasoning it may also be assumed that both cause and effect have always existed – hence samsara. However, the relationship of cause and effect raises an obvious philosophical question: can something come from nothing? – can there be effect without cause? In the sensual world the answer seems to be no, but if it is no how did cause and effect come into being? Perhaps cause and effect do not, in fact, exist; after all, they have no structure but are just perceptual concepts of the human mind. I believe that cause and effect do exist because events occur around me and to me, some of which I can control through the manipulation of what I perceive as causes. I can even make chain reactions of cause and effect predictably occur. For example, staying up all night causes me to become too tired to go to university, so I miss lectures and generate failure. I can, however, alter the chain of events to produce a different effect by changing the effect’s cause; I can go to bed early, awaken in time for university, attend lectures and pass my subjects. In summary, I agree that cause and effect do exist but that cause comes before effect.
As Samkhya is dualist the most basic philosophical question is: what is the relationship between Samkhya’s cosmic categories, purusha and prakriti, and how do they interact? According to John M. Koller, Samkhya believe that there is no relation between prakriti and purusha except that created by ignorance. (Koller 59) Yet, before we explore this relationship it is necessary to know Samkhya’s definition of prakriti and purusha.
Parkriti and purusha are opposing forms of ultimate, independent and separate reality. Parkriti is the primordial material cause – observable, bound, constantly active. Due to the imbalance of its gunas, its nature is to transform cause into effect therefore facilitating evolution of the sensual world. The gunas of Parkriti are: sattva – maintains prakriti (produces pleasure); rajas – invigorates prakriti (produces pain); and tamas – stability and permanence of prakriti (produces indifference). Conversely, purusha is pure consciousness; responsible, by its mere presence, for destabilising the primary balance of the gunas and therefore setting in motion the evolutionary process of prakriti. It is isolated, free, indifferent, inactive, calm, a spectator; the ultimate Self of the individual; the ultimate purposer.
If purusha causes the imbalance of parakriti’s gunas which facilitates evolution there must be a connection between the two, even though they are opposites. I propose that this connection is like that of the fiery sun in its opposition to the aqueous earth. The sun, like purusha, is responsible by it mere presence for setting in motion the evolutionary process on Earth. It is stationary in its relation to Earth, free of the orbit that binds Earth to it, indifferent to Earth, like a cosmic spectator, and so far as the evolution of biological life is concerned the sun is relatively inactive. Earth, however, like Parkriti, provided the primordial material for life there-on and is bound by its orbit to a cycle of constant motion whilst abounding with the activity of life. The relationship between purusha and prakriti is like that of gravity which holds the Earth in orbit around the sun; by the sun’s presence gravity affects the elements of Earth so as to evolve life. It seems reasonable to surmise that, similarly, without some force connecting purusha and prakriti the gunas would never have been disturbed and hence the evolution of the sensual world would not have occurred.
Samkhya philosophers take into account the changing world and explain it with a theory of evolution, beginning with the presence of purusha, which caused the imbalance of the gunas (or threads) of prakriti: sattva, rajas and tamas. They believe that at the beginning of everything was a single primordial material cause; they conclude that this cause, prakriti, has the same nature as everything of the world of experience, and vice-versa, because obviously everything comes from prakriti. (Koller 57)
This seems reasonable to me, for western science even had eventually come up with a similar theory, ‘The Big Bang’, and so, although pre-existent of scientific study, the theory has scientific merit. Yet still they are all merely philosophical theories. A major problem I have with this theory is that, if prakriti and purusha are eternal and the mere presence of purusha disturbs the gunas so as to bring evolutionary prakriti into action, it seems contradictory. It seems to me that there must always have been a disturbance in the gunas and that, therefore, evolution must be an eternal process. Samkhya, however, discounts this idea, holding instead that there was a time when the gunas were in balance. I believe that this is a religious justification rather than a well-considered theory, for it seems that if evolution is eternal there can be no escape from it except through death, and yet if death is the escape then that negates the teachings of the Dharma Shastras and the Gita, and also inspires the question of why we don’t just suicide and prevent the hassle of life and the suffering which brings into question the point and meaning of life.
My current theory is that evolution is eternal and death is the ‘way out’ of suffering, and that if all the elements that create life come together by chance, the existence of life is perhaps the universal equivalent of winning the lottery. All the planets with numbers that come up win the ‘lottery’ for life; indeed, just look at the night sky to see evidence of the many ‘lotto tickets’ that the ‘Big Bang’ generated. What happens afterwards is simply a matter of course and, this being a somewhat egocentric view, the point of life becomes pleasure; although not narcissistically so, for we are endowed with an awareness of others and their egocentricities and I believe we must take this into consideration as much for our own enjoyment as for others’.
I doubt that all things share elements of one another because each so-called base element (e.g. potassium) seems to be a substance unto itself. However, this is ambiguous, for perhaps we human animals don’t possess the scientific or perceptual ability to recognise the ultimate proof that there are only three elements making up everything and that all things are, therefore, related to each other. With the ‘Big Bang’ theory science currently concedes that Samkhya has the ‘everything comes from one source’ theory correct, but I still find it unlikely that one small group of thinkers would arrive at the correct answer in this.
In Asian Philosophies, John M. Koller states that the Samkhya view holds that the ‘… evolution of prakriti regards the first transformation as an illumination of prakriti by purusha…’, and that the result is the illumination of intelligence. This intelligence becomes self-aware which results in the evolution of ‘… distinct individual beings …’; then the organs and senses come into being and lastly objects. (Koller 58)
Intelligence ordering the universe and regulating its cycles? I’m unsure about that. It seems to me simply the nature of the universe. Planets revolve around suns. Moons revolve around planets. The gravity of bigger cosmic bodies affecting that of smaller ones seems to have created the natural rhythms which require no intelligence; and were there an intelligence ordering everything, I theorise that it would be so far removed from we, as microbes living on a speck of dust, that we would be unable to perceive it.
Bibliography:
Koller, John M., Asian Philosophies, 4th ed, Sydney: Pearson Education Australia PTY. Limited, 2002.
The Hindu Orthodox school of Samkhya’s main concern is the operation and physical nature of the cosmos and, therefore, the nature of cause and effect. Samkhya is a dualist philosophy because it divides the nature of the cosmos into two separate cosmic categories, which are both forms of ultimate reality, namely purusha and prakriti. According to Samkhya, purusha is pure consciousness and prakriti is the physical matter of existence from which everything is made; this necessitates that both realities must co-exist and be eternal. Samkhya believes that variants in forms of matter are the result of eternal interaction of the three aspects, or gunas, of prakriti: sattva, rajas and tamas.
Cause and effect are, by definition, interrelated. The Samkhya school does not debate this but is concerned with which came first, the chicken (the cause) or the egg (the effect). Samkhya believes the egg did and that hence the effect of a cause comes first. Its supposition that cause exists derives from the idea that the effect of the existence of the world could not have been produced without the pre-existence of its cause. It argues that causality is simply a shifting of the existing eternal material of the prakriti into different forms. Therefore, Samkhya argues that causes and effects are essentially the same, differing only in the forms they take, concluding that effect necessarily pre-exists within cause. Furthermore, as John M. Koller states, ‘… that which is absolutely nonexistent cannot have a cause.’ (Koller 55, 57)
I disagree with this Samkhya theory. It seems logical to me that cause comes before effect because the effect of life is observably death, and that the cause of life is life itself, so in order for death to exist, life has to exist first. Applying this same reasoning it may also be assumed that both cause and effect have always existed – hence samsara. However, the relationship of cause and effect raises an obvious philosophical question: can something come from nothing? – can there be effect without cause? In the sensual world the answer seems to be no, but if it is no how did cause and effect come into being? Perhaps cause and effect do not, in fact, exist; after all, they have no structure but are just perceptual concepts of the human mind. I believe that cause and effect do exist because events occur around me and to me, some of which I can control through the manipulation of what I perceive as causes. I can even make chain reactions of cause and effect predictably occur. For example, staying up all night causes me to become too tired to go to university, so I miss lectures and generate failure. I can, however, alter the chain of events to produce a different effect by changing the effect’s cause; I can go to bed early, awaken in time for university, attend lectures and pass my subjects. In summary, I agree that cause and effect do exist but that cause comes before effect.
As Samkhya is dualist the most basic philosophical question is: what is the relationship between Samkhya’s cosmic categories, purusha and prakriti, and how do they interact? According to John M. Koller, Samkhya believe that there is no relation between prakriti and purusha except that created by ignorance. (Koller 59) Yet, before we explore this relationship it is necessary to know Samkhya’s definition of prakriti and purusha.
Parkriti and purusha are opposing forms of ultimate, independent and separate reality. Parkriti is the primordial material cause – observable, bound, constantly active. Due to the imbalance of its gunas, its nature is to transform cause into effect therefore facilitating evolution of the sensual world. The gunas of Parkriti are: sattva – maintains prakriti (produces pleasure); rajas – invigorates prakriti (produces pain); and tamas – stability and permanence of prakriti (produces indifference). Conversely, purusha is pure consciousness; responsible, by its mere presence, for destabilising the primary balance of the gunas and therefore setting in motion the evolutionary process of prakriti. It is isolated, free, indifferent, inactive, calm, a spectator; the ultimate Self of the individual; the ultimate purposer.
If purusha causes the imbalance of parakriti’s gunas which facilitates evolution there must be a connection between the two, even though they are opposites. I propose that this connection is like that of the fiery sun in its opposition to the aqueous earth. The sun, like purusha, is responsible by it mere presence for setting in motion the evolutionary process on Earth. It is stationary in its relation to Earth, free of the orbit that binds Earth to it, indifferent to Earth, like a cosmic spectator, and so far as the evolution of biological life is concerned the sun is relatively inactive. Earth, however, like Parkriti, provided the primordial material for life there-on and is bound by its orbit to a cycle of constant motion whilst abounding with the activity of life. The relationship between purusha and prakriti is like that of gravity which holds the Earth in orbit around the sun; by the sun’s presence gravity affects the elements of Earth so as to evolve life. It seems reasonable to surmise that, similarly, without some force connecting purusha and prakriti the gunas would never have been disturbed and hence the evolution of the sensual world would not have occurred.
Samkhya philosophers take into account the changing world and explain it with a theory of evolution, beginning with the presence of purusha, which caused the imbalance of the gunas (or threads) of prakriti: sattva, rajas and tamas. They believe that at the beginning of everything was a single primordial material cause; they conclude that this cause, prakriti, has the same nature as everything of the world of experience, and vice-versa, because obviously everything comes from prakriti. (Koller 57)
This seems reasonable to me, for western science even had eventually come up with a similar theory, ‘The Big Bang’, and so, although pre-existent of scientific study, the theory has scientific merit. Yet still they are all merely philosophical theories. A major problem I have with this theory is that, if prakriti and purusha are eternal and the mere presence of purusha disturbs the gunas so as to bring evolutionary prakriti into action, it seems contradictory. It seems to me that there must always have been a disturbance in the gunas and that, therefore, evolution must be an eternal process. Samkhya, however, discounts this idea, holding instead that there was a time when the gunas were in balance. I believe that this is a religious justification rather than a well-considered theory, for it seems that if evolution is eternal there can be no escape from it except through death, and yet if death is the escape then that negates the teachings of the Dharma Shastras and the Gita, and also inspires the question of why we don’t just suicide and prevent the hassle of life and the suffering which brings into question the point and meaning of life.
My current theory is that evolution is eternal and death is the ‘way out’ of suffering, and that if all the elements that create life come together by chance, the existence of life is perhaps the universal equivalent of winning the lottery. All the planets with numbers that come up win the ‘lottery’ for life; indeed, just look at the night sky to see evidence of the many ‘lotto tickets’ that the ‘Big Bang’ generated. What happens afterwards is simply a matter of course and, this being a somewhat egocentric view, the point of life becomes pleasure; although not narcissistically so, for we are endowed with an awareness of others and their egocentricities and I believe we must take this into consideration as much for our own enjoyment as for others’.
I doubt that all things share elements of one another because each so-called base element (e.g. potassium) seems to be a substance unto itself. However, this is ambiguous, for perhaps we human animals don’t possess the scientific or perceptual ability to recognise the ultimate proof that there are only three elements making up everything and that all things are, therefore, related to each other. With the ‘Big Bang’ theory science currently concedes that Samkhya has the ‘everything comes from one source’ theory correct, but I still find it unlikely that one small group of thinkers would arrive at the correct answer in this.
In Asian Philosophies, John M. Koller states that the Samkhya view holds that the ‘… evolution of prakriti regards the first transformation as an illumination of prakriti by purusha…’, and that the result is the illumination of intelligence. This intelligence becomes self-aware which results in the evolution of ‘… distinct individual beings …’; then the organs and senses come into being and lastly objects. (Koller 58)
Intelligence ordering the universe and regulating its cycles? I’m unsure about that. It seems to me simply the nature of the universe. Planets revolve around suns. Moons revolve around planets. The gravity of bigger cosmic bodies affecting that of smaller ones seems to have created the natural rhythms which require no intelligence; and were there an intelligence ordering everything, I theorise that it would be so far removed from we, as microbes living on a speck of dust, that we would be unable to perceive it.
Bibliography:
Koller, John M., Asian Philosophies, 4th ed, Sydney: Pearson Education Australia PTY. Limited, 2002.
posted by Assignment Nerd at 10:53 pm
1 Comments:
University: University of Melbourne
Subject: Asian Philosophies
Semester: 2, 2005
Mark: around 65
Comments: I suck at philosophy what can I say.
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