Kapila is the assumed founder of the Samkhya religion. Tradition informs us that Kapila was seen as a mystical and legendary figure. He was thought to be the incarnation of Visnu, the incarnation of Agni, and even the very son of Brahman.30 The man Kapila likely
29 The Swampman example demonstrates this.
30 Sarvepalli Radhakrishnanand and Charles A. Moore, The Samkhya-Karika, in A Sourcebook in Indian
Philosophy, eds. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnanand and Charles A. Moore (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
lived before the Common Era during the seventh century.31 This would make the Samkhya
tradition one of the oldest philosophical traditions in all of Hinduism.
During Kapila’s time, the contemporary cultic practice and the theological
emphasis was that of trusting in ritual practices. Vedic priests performing the right animal sacrifices and doing the right rituals was part of the central paradigm makeup of pre-Kapila Vedic religion.32 The Samkhya system challenged this paradigm by criticizing both the traditional understanding of heaven and its emphasis on cultic practices. It is important to note that though Kapila’s system was a critique to such practices, it didn’t hold that these practices and views were totally useless or wrong.
Samkhya contrasts sharply with Advaita Vedanta Hinduism as it actually shares much more in common with contemporary Western naturalistic philosophy. Unlike Advaita Vedanta, Samkhya is a dualistic philosophy, recognizing the existence of
ultimately two substances: prakrti and purusa. Prakrti is that which is primordial matter.33 It is the stuff that all of the world evolves from. It is unmanifested, undifferentiated,
undecaying, and unconscious.34 Harrison states, ‘[p]rakrti can be imagined as an inert mass of dark matter that only becomes active when purusa [consciousness] starts taking an interest in it.’35
Prakrti is made up of distinct infra-atomic like particles called gunas.36 The three gunas that make up prakrti include: Sattva (light), Rajas (passion or energy), and Tamas (inertia).37 These gunas are always in a state of flux.38 The gunas can assemble and
31 Ibid.
32 Pulinbihari Chakravarti, Origin and Development of the Sā ṃkhya System of Thought (New Delhi: Oriental
Books Reprint Corp, 1975), 4.
33 Harrison, Eastern Philosophy: The Basics, op. cit., 63.
34 Chakravarti, Origin and Development of the Sā ṃkhya System of Thought, op. cit., 208. 35 Harrison, Eastern Philosophy: The Basics, op. cit., 63.
36 Chakravarti, Origin and Development of the Sā ṃkhya System of Thought, op. cit., 93; Ishvara Krishna, The
Samkhya-Karika, in A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, eds. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnanand and Charles A.
Moore (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), 431.
37 Harrison, Eastern Philosophy: The Basics, op. cit., 63.
connect in different ways and when they do, the gunas are called dharmas.39 These
different combinations of the gunas (dharmas) are primarily responsible for our illusions of pleasure, pain, and cognitive malfunction.40 One could properly call these illusions maya.41
The other fundamental substance that exists is referred to as purusa. Purusa is pure consciousness. By consciousness, it is important to note that the claim isn’t that reality is an individual or a self as one might understand consciousness in Western philosophy; rather, consciousness is thought to be something more analogous to what the Advaita Vedanta tradition understands about Brahman on the 1st layer of reality (Brahman without qualities).
Pulinbihari Chakravarti schematizes the arguments that Isvarakrsna, the name connected with the oldest work in the Samkhya tradition, and his commentators advance to establish the existence of the purusa:
(1) Since all composite bodies are for the use of some one other than themselves, so purusa exists.
(2) Since all manifestations of prakrti are objects forming different permutations and combinations of the gunas, there must be a subject, a knower of these manifestations, who should be devoid of gunas.
(3) Since there must be a presiding entity for which prakrti produces this variegated universe, that is no other but purusa.
(4) Since there must be some one to enjoy the products of prakrti which are either agreeable or disagreeable, that is none but purusa who exists for the sake of enjoying them.
(5) Since there is a tendency towards liberation, purusa must exist. 42
(1) is supported by recognizing certain observations in scenarios like the following:
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid., 213.
41 Ibid., 209.
You look around in your bedroom and you realize that the bed exists for a body to lie in it. The sheets exist for a person to cover up with on the bed. The mosquito net exists to keep out misquotes for the person lying in the bed. Everything that we experience exists for the purpose of something else.43
Arguments like the ones formulated here help explain why the Samkhya advocates felt that it was rational to accept the doctrine of the pursua. Now that I have introduced the two fundamental substances that exist, according to the Samkhya system, I will move the discussion to addressing how these substances are thought to have come together.
Though Samkhya would deny that these two substances had a beginning,44 there was a time when purusa and prakrti existed apart from one another. Thus, purusa and prakrti are not inherently connected, they are only superficially connected. It is unnatural for one to be affected by the other, but just as a transparent crystal lying close to a red flower can be contaminated, so can purusa be contaminated by prakrti.45 Samkhya is nearly silent on the matter of what caused purusa to become contaminated with prakrti. This is seen as a sort of ‘cosmic blip.’46 Samkhya is largely an atheistic philosophy47 and denies that God had any role in it.48 In fact, the gods that do exist are only temporary
superhumans who upon dying, go back into the cycle of rebirth.49
Like in contemporary Western naturalistic philosophy, there is thought to be an evolutionary process that took place when the purusa came into contact with the prakrti. And like in contemporary naturalism, this evolutionary process is not thought to be guided by any intentional being. In the Samkhya tradition, the prakrti is responsible for the cause of the universe and all causes within it, thus a postulation of the Divine would be
considered useless and unwarranted.50
43 Ibid., 315.
44 Ibid., 12.
45 Ibid., 319.
46 Harrison, Eastern Philosophy: The Basics, op. cit., 63-64.
47 Ibid., 66.
48 Ishvara Krishna, The Sāṃkhya-Karika, in A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, op. cit., 442.
The evolutionary process that took place, according to the Samkhya tradition, is supposed to explain why the world looks the way that it does, which would include an explanation of why people experience pain and evil. The problem with the current
condition of humankind is that humans lack the ability to discriminate between the purusa and the praktri. In reality, ‘the individual is not body, life, or mind, but the informing self, silent, peaceful, eternal. The self is pure spirit.’51 The empirical self that exists is the free soul combined with evolved prakrti. The purusa has forgotten its true nature as it has become deluded with the belief that it thinks, feels, and acts.52 According to Chakravarti, ‘[s]o long as this conjunction exists, it thinks itself to be one with prakrti and thereby attributes to its own self miseries and such other properties which actually belong to the latter…[t]his is where one cognizes the non-eternal as eternal and the impure as the pure. It is opposed to right knowledge.’53
Because one is trapped into thinking that the purusa is one with the prakrti, one needs liberation. This liberation comes by way of right knowledge. According to Zimmer, ‘[t]rue insight, “discriminating knowledge” (viveka), can be achieved only by bringing this mind to a state of rest.’54 One must suppress certain activities of the mind in order for desire to disappear. The five things that need to be suppressed go as follows:
1. Right notions, derived from accurate perception (right perception, inference, and testimony)
2. Erroneous notions, derived from misapprehension 3. Fantasy or fancy
4. Sleep
5. And memory.55
50 Matthew Dasti, ‘Hindu Theism,’ in Routledge Companion to Theism, eds. Charles Taliaferro, Victoria
Harrison, and Stewart Goetz (New York: Routledge, 2013), 35; Ishvara Krishna, The Sā ṃkhya-Karika, in
A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, op. cit., 442.
51 Radhakrishnan and Moore, A Source Book in Indian Philosophy, op. cit., 425.
52 Ibid.
53 Chakravarti., Origin and Development of the Sā ṃkhya System of Thought, op. cit., 319. 54 Zimmer, Philosophies of India, op. cit., 287.
For the Samkhya tradition, in order to achieve enlightenment, our minds need to enter into a state of rest. Being that all of these activities are mental activities (mental activity still goes on while one sleeps), these things need to be suppressed. In suppressing these items, all other mental activities and desire will automatically disappear.56 Through the
appropriate practice of yoga and through the suppression of certain mental activity, one will have the capacity to rightly discriminate between the prakrti and the purusa. This will lead to the realization that there exists an ontological distinction between oneself and the prakrti. Only when this occurs, does one enter enlightenment and obtain salvation from the pain and evil in the world.