A cultural and intellecual history of Ancient India.
Impeccably crafted… a monumental achievement. —Rich Follett for Readers’ Favorite ★★★★★
Sitting down with the Bhagavad Gita at the age of sixteen opened many new channels in my mind. Ever since, for the best part of thirty years, I have been searching for a book on Indian thought that ties it all up, coherently and succinctly.
Write the book you want to read, they say—and this, here, is it.
While covering all the important areas (see contents list below), you will learn:
How the Vedic gods are related to the Greek and Roman ones.
The secret of the self that even the gods were desperate to learn.
How to stop suffering, according to the Buddha.
How to achieve enlightenment, according to the Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains.
How the swastika came to be appropriated by the Nazis.
How Gandhi’s non-violence is rooted in Indian philosophy.
Why the Kama Sutra is about a lot more than sex.
What yoga’s actually about—not even my yoga teacher knew this.
How the Gupta Golden Age led to the invention of zero, chess, and nose jobs.
And much, much more.
Never before has the history of Indian thought and culture been laid out as clearly and succinctly as in Burton’s book.—Prof Nicolas Martin, Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, University of Zürich
The parallels between Indian and Greek philosophy amazed me… This book will hold your interest until the last page.—Courtnee Turner Hoyle for Readers’ Favorite ★★★★★
Burton shines a fascinating light on one of the world’s most ancient, and still thriving, cultures.—The US Review of Books (Recommended)
Neel is an incredibly insightful and elegant writer, with a deep knowledge of all he surveys.—Dr James Davies, medical anthropologist and psychotherapist, author of ‘Cracked’
Burton’s writing blends deep knowledge of his subject with lively anecdote and a genuine concern for how we might draw on the insights of psychology and philosophy to live a better life. Highly recommended!—Dr Gareth Southwell, philosopher and writer, author of ‘Words of Wisdom’
I’ve read many Neel Burton books. He’s a wonderful writer and able to immerse you lightly in pretty heavy stuff.—Adrian Bailey, Vine Voice
Contents List
Preface Introduction: A Picture of India
1. The Indus Valley Civilization 2. The Aryans and their Vedas 3. Vedic Gods: Indra, Agni, Soma, and the Rest 4. Sanskrit and the Grammar of Panini 5. The Upanishads 6. Brahman and Brahma 7. Atman, or the Self 8. Karma, Samsara, Moksha, Yoga 9. Life of the Buddha 10. Buddhist Philosophy 11. The Jataka Tales 12. The Panchatantra 13. Jainism, Ahimsa, and Gandhi’s Satyagraha 14. The Mauryas: Chandragupta and Ashoka 15. Greek India 16. Dharma, the Laws of Manu, and the Caste System 17. The Arthashastra of Kautilya 18. The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana 19. The Ramayana of Valmiki 20. The Mahabharata of Vyasa 21. The Bhagavad Gita, or Song of God 22. The Puranas: Vishnu, Shiva, and Devi 23. The Guptas: The Golden Age of India 24. The Six Darshanas: Samkhya-Yoga 25. The Six Darshanas: Nyaya-Vaisheshika 26. The Six Darshanas: Mimamsa-Vedanta
Yoga is one of the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy.
A darshana is an outlook, a philosophy, literally, a “vision.” The term darshana is especially associated with the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy, the so-called shaddarshana, or “six visions.” What makes them orthodox, and therefore Hindu, is that they accept the authority of the Vedas. With good reason, the shaddarshana are often presented in pairs: Samkhya-Yoga, Nyaya-Vaisheshika, and Mimamsa-Vedanta. In this post, I shall, of course, be focussing on Samkhya-Yoga.
The Samkhya School
The founder of the Samkhya school is held to be Kapila, who lived, perhaps, in the sixth century BCE. Little is known about him. He is sometimes described as an avatar of Vishnu or the grandson of Brahma. He is mentioned by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita as the greatest of sages: “Amongst the gandharvas I am Chitrath, and among the siddhas, I am sage Kapila.” According to Puranic lore, his meditation produced such intense inner heat that, when they disturbed him, he incinerated the Sagarputras, the 60,001 sons of King Sagara, simply by opening his eyes.
In the Buddhist tradition, the students of Kapila built the Shakya capital of Kapilavastu. The Buddha, who was raised in Kapilavastu, was therefore steeped in Samkhya philosophy, explaining the affinities between Samkhya and Buddhism.
Kapila is held to have authored the Samkhya Sutra, although the extant text appears to be medieval in origin. Instead, the school’s primary text is the Samkhyakarika by Ishvarakrishna, who lived in the third or fourth century CE.
In the first verse, Ishvarakrishna states the aim of Samkhya: to eliminate the three forms of dukkha (suffering): internal, from physical and mental disease; external, from outside threats, especially other people; and divine, that is, from natural disasters.
Samkhya is a radical dualism that holds that the universe is made up of two independent, infinite, and eternal realities: Purusha (souls) and Prakriti (matter or nature). The Purushas are conscious but have no attributes. They are pure ‘witness consciousness.’ Prakriti is composed of the three gunas (qualities or tendencies of matter), sattva (preservation, harmony), rajas (creation, passion), and tamas (destruction, apathy).
Initially, the gunas are in equilibrium. But at its approach, Purusha disturbs this equilibrium in favour of rajas, and this imbalance sets off material creation.
Comparisons With Western Dualism
Unlike Western dualism, which is between mind and matter, Samkhyan dualism is between self and matter—with “matter” encompassing most of what Westerners would consider “mind” (intellect, ego, emotions, etc.)—everything, in fact, except witness consciousness, of which mind is the instrument.
Also, unlike Western dualism, Samkhyan dualism is atheistic or agnostic. Although an orthodox school, Samkhya is remarkably silent about God and the Vedas.
The Samkhyan Account of Creation
At the approach of Purusha, undifferentiated Prakriti evolves 23 tattvas (elements, aspects), first buddhi (intelligence), and from buddhi ahamkara (ego or self-consciousness).
Under the influence of sattva guna, ahamkara yields the five organs of sense (eyes, ears, nose, skin, tongue), the five organs of action (arms, legs, speech, organs of elimination, organs of creation), and manas (mind).
Then, under the influence of tamas guna, ahamkara yields the five subtle elements (sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste), from which the five material elements (earth, air, water, fire, ether) emerge.
Notice that the material world is last in the order of creation. Its evolution from the five senses suggests that the world is an illusion, although this is never explicitly stated.
Manas has a special role in mediating between the ten organs, the five senses, and the world without. Being of Prakriti, buddhi, ahamkara, and manas are not conscious. However, they appear to be conscious and are set into motion by proximity with Purusha—functioning, as it were, by reflected consciousness.
The Samkhyan Account of Liberation
Adding Purusha and Prakriti to the 23 tattvas makes a total of 25 tattvas—of which 24 are of Prakriti. Nonetheless, it is for the sake of Purusha that the differentiation occurs, to provide it with experience and, in time, with liberation (moksha). By reflecting the consciousness of Purusha, Prakriti is showing Purusha to itself.
Purusha and Prakriti are like a lame man and a blind man, lost in the wilderness. The blind man carries the lame man, who guides his steps. Both are looking for their way home, to moksha, when they will part ways. But having never traveled, the lame man is avid of experience and so enthralled by his adventure that he forgets about his destination.
To be consistent with the universal law of karma, Samkhya assumes that a Purusha that is bonded to Prakriti (that is, a jiva), has two bodies: a gross, mortal body, and a subtle body made up of the higher functions which transmigrates according to past merit. The continuity of the subtle body enables the Purusha to keep on learning through numerous incarnations.
Final liberation consists in the realization of the separateness of Purusha and Prakriti. This involves a process of involution, or “going back to the womb”—that is, reversing, through intellect and understanding, the process of evolution from the material elements back to undifferentiated Prakriti and beyond.
In short, salvation consists in counting backwards.
The Yoga School
Samkhya exerted such a profound influence on Yoga that the two schools are sometimes merged as Samkhya-Yoga. But whereas Samkhya emphasizes knowledge and discrimination as the path to liberation, Yoga rather emphasizes discipline.
Although Yoga essentially borrows the metaphysics of Samkhya, it introduces a twenty-sixth tattva, namely, Ishvara, or “the Lord”—for which reason it has been called “Theistic Samkhya.” The nature of “Ishvara” is open to interpretation, but it may be regarded as a special Purusha that is unentangled and, therefore, inactive.
The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali
In the second century BCE, or perhaps the fifth century CE, Patanjali collected the ideas around yoga in the Yoga Sutra. These 196 verses became the foundational text of Yoga, which, towards the end of the first millennium, began to be mentioned as a separate school.
Patanjali’s synthesis influenced all other schools of Hindu philosophy, which regard it as authoritative. It is sometimes referred to as Raja Yoga (Royal Yoga) or Ashtanga Yoga (Eight-Limbed Yoga) to distinguish it from the many other forms of yoga, such as Jnana, Karma, Bhakti, Mantra, and Tantra—which are, of course, more complementary than mutually exclusive.
The Yoga Sutra has four sections: Samahdi (Concentration), Sadhana (Practice), Vibhuti (Yogic or Magical Powers), and Kaivalya (Isolation or Liberation). In the first section, Patanjali defines yoga as “the cessation of mental fluctuations” (chitta vritti nirodha)—with chitta (mind) assimilated in the Samkhyan system to buddhi, ahamkara, and manas. In the third section, he warns against practicing yoga for the perverted purpose of acquiring yogic powers—suggesting that this sort of thing may have been common.
Ashtanga or Eight-Limbed Yoga
The eight stages of Patanjali’s Yoga are:
Yama(abstinence or restraint)
Niyama (discipline or observances)
Asana (‘seat’, posture)
Pranayama (breath control)
Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses)
Dharana (concentration of the mind on some object)
Dhyana (steady meditation on that object) and
Samadhi (absorption, ecstatic union with the ultimate).
The first two stages are ethical preparations. Yama involves abstinence from injury, falsehood, stealing, lust, and avarice. Niyama involves purity or cleanliness, contentment, austerity, study, and devotion to God.
The next two stages are physical preparations, each involving a series of exercises to remove physical or bodily distractions.
The fifth stage involves taking control of the mind by emptying it of impressions.
The remaining three stages, which may take several lifetimes to perfect, aim at increasingly heightened states of awareness and return.
According to Patanjali, the five kleshas (poisons, obstacles to Yoga and liberation) are ignorance, ego, attachment or desire, aversion to unpleasant things or truths, and fear of death and desire to live.
Final Remarks
The aim of yoga, and ascetic practice in general, is essentially to react against ordinary human habits, which entangle us, or our Purusha, with Prakriti, to the extent that Purusha identifies with Prakriti and more particularly with the restless chitta and its manifold modifications.
This is a far cry from the yoga practised in the West as a form of physical culture, with postures borrowed from Hatha Yoga and optional spiritual sprinkling for stress relief. Even Hatha Yoga is about a lot more than that.
Two early insights that led the Buddha to enlightenment are the Middle Way and Dependent Origination. According to the doctrine of the Middle Way, we are more likely to achieve insight and wisdom if we avoid extremes of self-gratification and self-mortification.
According to the doctrine of Dependent Origination, or Interdependent Arising, life is a continuous process of change, and every instance of change has manifold causes and effects. This means that all things are conditioned by other things, and that all things are interconnected. Suffering arises from a craving for permanence; but all permanence is an illusion that, in time, can only lead to pain and disappointment.
Although nothing exists permanently, it is equally wrong to say that nothing exists at all. This, too, is a middle way. Does the self exist? In a sense it does; in another sense it does not—which is why, when asked the question, the Buddha, as was his way, simply remained silent.
Nagarjuna on Emptiness
The Middle Way and Dependent Origination pervade all aspects of Buddhist thought. After the Buddha, the most noted Buddhist philosopher is Nagarjuna (d. c. 250 CE), who founded or re-founded the Madhyamaka (“Middle Way”) school, an important strand of Mahayana (Great Vehicle) Buddhism. In the Root Verses on the Middle Way, Nagarjuna argues that between the extremes of permanence and nothingness lies emptiness, or shunyata. Although they exist, all phenomena are “empty” insofar as they lack permanence and autonomous existence.
Although this sounds pessimistic—and Nagarjuna has been accused of being a nihilist—it is precisely this emptiness and fluidity that underlies the possibility of change and creation. In Zen Buddhism, a more dynamic alternative to the koan, or riddle, is for the master to suddenly slap his student to shake him out of who he thinks he is and what he thinks he’s doing. This, however, would not be legal today.
The Not-Self
How is it that the self can both exist and not exist?
The self, or “not-self” (anatta), is composed of five elements (skandhas), namely, body, sensation, perception, will, and consciousness. The five skandhas are in a constant state of flux but together create for the not-self the illusion of integrity and continuity, that is, the illusion of the self.
This explains why, when I try to become aware of myself, I can only ever become aware of such and such perception, such and such sensation, or such and such thought, but never of any actual, core self.
Try it now for “yourself”…
Rebirth and Release
The death of the bodily self leads to the disaggregation of the skandhas and to their re-aggregation into another not-self, which is neither identical to nor entirely different from the previous one, but forms part of a causal continuum with it. An analogy that is often offered to describe this process of rebirth is that of a flame, fuelled by desire, passing from one candle to the next.
The cycle of rebirth can only be broken if the self is able to transcend its subjective and distorted image of the world, which is built around the “I am” conceit. This, then, is nibbana, or, in Sanskrit, nirvana. Nirvana, as I see it, rests on the understanding that consciousness is a sequence of conscious moments rather than the continuous, unbroken consciousness of the “I am” conceit.
Western Parallels
If this all sounds rather mystical, consider that the empiricist philosopher David Hume (d. 1776) independently arrived at a similar view:
…when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for a time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible to myself, and may truly be said not to exist.
This is taken from Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature.
Implications
Our ego defences as broadly conceived—that is, not only our ego defences proper but also our habits, customs, culture, and other ties—may provide us with an illusion of self, but they also define us as such and such, and, in so doing, constrain our range of thought, feeling, and action. Paradoxically, the very elements that furnish us with our sense of self are also those that prevent us from fulfilling our true promise and potential as human beings.
As I argue in my book on the psychology of self-deception, it is only by renouncing the self, that is, by dropping her defences and committing symbolic suicide, that a person is able to open up to different modes of being and relating and transform herself into a pure essence of humanity. In so doing, she becomes free to recast herself as a more joyful and productive person, and attains the only species of transcendence and immortality that is open to us, mere mortals.
And so, if we are to live, we must first learn to die.
There is much more to mental health than the mere absence of mental disorder. Today, I write about all the things that I was never taught. Click here to find out more.
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