M
Moksa
˙ would agree with such assessments, they are cer-
Aleksandar Uskokov
Department of South Asian Languages and
Civilizations, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL,
USA
Definition
Liberation from the cycle of rebirth
Introduction
Mokṣa or liberation from the cycle of rebirth
(saṁsāra) is perhaps the most important idea in
Hinduism or more generally in South Asian intel-
lectual history. It is commonly described as the
highest of the four goals of human life
(puruṣārtha), the other three being “religion”
(dharma), wealth (artha), and pleasure (kāma).
It is also customarily said to be the cornerstone
of Indian philosophy: the famous historian
Surendranath Dasgupta claims, for instance, that
the related doctrines of karma and mukti, libera-
tion, are the two “fixed postulates” of Hindu phi-
losophy, summing up “all the important
peculiarities,” so “cardinal and inviolable that
there was hardly any voice . . . in India that pro-
tested against them” ([7], p. 10). Another histo-
rian, A.G. Krishna Warrier, describes liberation as
“the raison d’etre of all system-building in India”
# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2018
P. Jain et al. (eds.), Hinduism and Tribal Religions, Encyclopedia of Indian Religions,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1036-5_579-1
(see also [28, 38], p. 13). While not everyone
tainly not very far from the mark.
It is not quite possible to give a single, uniform
definition of liberation, but a convenient way to
begin thinking about it is through what Wilhelm
Halbfass calls the “therapeutic paradigm,” a
worldview in which liberation is likened to the
state of medical health ([13], pp. 243–263).
According to this paradigm, life in general is a
problem, a sort of a disease (roga), which is most
directly describable as “suffering” (duḥkha). The
disease needs a diagnosis, a description of what
suffering is, and can be identified with embodi-
ment and transmigration (saṁsāra) and more gen-
erally with becoming: thus, the Bhāgavata speaks,
for instance, of the “disease of becoming” (bhava-
roga, 10.1.4). The disease requires an etiology,
identification of its underlining causes. Suffering
and rebirth are immediately caused by action
(karma), good and bad acts in general, bodily,
mental, and vocal (karma, thus, both as action
itself and its consequences). Action, thus, consti-
tutes a problem, and on its part, it is commonly a
symptom of a more persistent condition, charac-
terized by mental states or psychological torments
(kleśa) such as desire, anger, and greed (kāma,
krodha, lobha). These can further be traced to
ignorance (avidyā), which in the Brahmanical
systems generally stands for the misapprehension
of one thing as another, the Self as the body, but is
often equated with a cosmic principle, “primordial
matter.” These often constitute a chain in which
2 Moksa
ignorance, causing the torments and prompting
action, is itself reinforced by karma. Next, a ther-
apy for the disease is required, a means (sādhana)
that will directly address the core problem or
alternatively influence the “weak link” where the
chain can be broken. Finally, liberation requires a
description as a state of health, the result (phala):
is it barely an absence of the disease, breaking
away from rebirth and remaining without a body,
or perhaps something more? This fourfold scheme
is known to most students of Indian religions as
the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha, but it was
also shared by the Brahmanical schools of
Sāṅkhya, Yoga, Nyāya, and Advaita Vedānta.
Most of the terms for liberation in Indian intel-
lectual history are, in fact, negative expressions,
pointing to getting rid of something undesirable:
“deliverance” (mokṣa, mukti), “cessation” (nirvāṇa,
nivṛtti, nirvṛtti, nirodha), “isolation” (kaivalya),
“turning off” (apavarga), “destruction” (hāna), “no
return” (anāvṛtti, apunar-āvṛtti), “no rebirth”
(apunar-bhava, apunar-janma), “fearlessness”
(abhaya), and even the most indeterminate
“absence” (abhāva). There is one, however, which
is positive, namely “the highest good” (niḥśreyasa,
paraṁ śreyas), a term with a wider semantic range.
In the corpus of dharma literature, as well as in the
Bhagavad Gī tā, “the highest good” is used in the
sense of any general good which one may attain by
observing one’s duties, commensurate with and
appropriate to one’s social standing. In the late
Vasiṣṭha Dharma Sūtra (1.1-3, [26]: 248), the
highest good is more restrictedly (and explicitly)
identified with “heaven” that one wins after death,
but in the Manu-Smṛti (12.88-90, [27]: 217) heaven
or “equality with the gods” is associated with
another value, “prosperity” (abhyudaya), whereas
liberation is explicitly called “the highest good.”
The important takeaway from this is to appre-
ciate that, through “the highest good,” liberation
was a part of a wider set of contending ultimate
values, the principal among which in the early
history was heaven. This had three important con-
sequences. First, it was possible to understand
heaven as a competing doctrine of liberation,
and we find such a case in the Vedāntin Śaṅkara
(Introduction to the commentary on the Taittirī ya
Upaniṣad [TUBh], [33], pp. 223–229). Second, it
˙
was possible to understand the performance of
ritual, through its association with heaven the
highest good, as a means of liberation, and the
Buddhist philosopher Bhavya claimed that
Mīmāṁsakas, the advocates of heaven, held that
liberation could only be attained by ritual
(Madhyamaka-Hṛdaya 9.1-2, [18], p. 9). Third,
even when heaven was not taken as a doctrine of
liberation, it became important to state that it was
an inadequate solution to the human predicament:
we find this most prominently in the doctrines of
Sāṅkhya and Yoga. Moving farther in history,
when the doctrine of bhakti developed as another
contender for the highest good, it was important to
clarify its relationship with liberation as well.
Staying with this a bit longer, Mīmāṁsā
hermeneuts theorized heaven not as a place, but
a state, that of highest possible happiness, and this
became one of the most influential definitions of
liberation as well. So, the scope in which the
meaning of liberation had to be negotiated was
constituted by the total absence of suffering on the
one hand and the highest possible happiness on
the other. The eleventh-century Advaitin
Sarvajñātman put this elegantly: “Every living
being in this world desires thus: may I have the
highest bliss, and may the misery which arises
from worldly enjoyment and prevents the experi-
ence of bliss come to an end. The wise men
declare that the essence of liberation is unexcelled
bliss and absolute removal of misery” (SŚ 1.66-
67, [37], pp. 30–31). Thus, it was possible to
affirm that liberation was not just the absence of
suffering, but a positive state of happiness as well.
Whether a philosopher or a school would accept
the second, and if so, how the experience of hap-
piness would be interpreted, was largely depen-
dent on two factors: the essential nature of the
individual Self and the acceptance or otherwise
of another, Supreme Self, different from the indi-
vidual. In other words, the various doctrines of
liberation were consequent on ontological presup-
positions and religious commitments. We can,
nevertheless, say in general that liberation
throughout its history was in a permanently
renegotiated liminal space between these two:
absence of suffering and the highest bliss.
Moksa
˙
Scholars have commonly traced the idea of
liberation to the Upaniṣads, and two of their con-
cerns: the appearance of the notion of “re-death,”
punar-mṛtyu, or the fear of Vedic ritualists of a
second death in heaven, found in the late
Brāhmaṇas but most explicit in the early
Upaniṣads, and the development of a wider theory
of karma, no longer restricted to ritual action
[8, 35, 40]. This is problematic, because many of
the staple notions constituting mokṣa, such as
ignorance, suffering, and causal chains of
embodiment, are virtually nonexistent in the
early Upaniṣads, and there is a giant leap from
“fear of re-death” to “it is all suffering.” Johannes
Bronkhorst, instead, argued that liberation
appeared in a non-Vedic cultural setting, geo-
graphically located in what he calls “Greater
Magadha,” roughly equivalent to modern north-
eastern India, out of which arose Buddhism, Jain-
ism, Sāṅkhya, Yoga, etc. and which was gradually
appropriated by Brahmanical society [4]. While
many details of Bronkhorst’s argument are sus-
pect, his basic insight has a strong appeal and
generally works much better than re-death.
An important question in all doctrines of liber-
ation was, when is mokṣa attained? When is one
precisely freed from transmigration? Can one be
liberated while still living, or is liberation neces-
sarily a postmortem event? If the first is the case, is
there a kind of a “graded” liberation, one that
happens during life and another one, final, at
death? What is the experience of liberation in
life like, and what are its consequences for one’s
social life and duties? If one cannot be liberated in
life, is there, nevertheless, some palpable result of
one’s soteriological practice: can one be liberated
from something, if not necessarily from transmi-
gration? These were the important questions of
the ideas of jī van-mukti, liberation while living,
and videha-mukti, disembodied liberation, which
appear under those names relatively late, but were
discussed from early on [10, 11, 36]. The idea of
jī van-mukti became very important in modern
Hinduism, where the Bhagavad Gī tā (BG) takes
the center stage and the social aspect of liberation
comes to the fore [32, 35].
Doing justice to mokṣa in Hinduism would
require a large volume, and under the following
3
headings, we present the mere contours of several
doctrines of liberation in prominent systems of
thought, with a focus on depth rather than breadth,
and eschewing questions of history. We include a
short account of heaven in Mīmāṁsā with a view
to “the highest good.”
Mīmāṁsā, Ritual, and Heaven
The school of Mīmāṁsā developed as a systema-
tization of the Brāhmaṇa corpus and a theology of
ritual. The Mī māṁsā-Sūtras (MS) of Jaimini
worked out hermeneutic principles whose pri-
mary application was in formulating rituals as
textual idealities, but Mīmāṁsakas did not bother
much with the “why” of a ritual that had preoccu-
pied modern scholars. A general principle was
that anything men do, they do for happiness. The
canonical commentator on the MS, Śabara
(ca. fifth century AD), said that all men strive
after happiness (commentary on MS 4.3.15,
[16], p. 807), so the “why” of a ritual was objec-
tively determined: it was the natural pursuit of
happiness. Mīmāṁsakas were mostly concerned
with “how” ritual is conducive to happiness, but
they also tackled the question of “what kind” of
happiness ritual brings. It is not necessary for our
purposes to deal with the first in detail, but we
should mention a couple of points.
For the Mīmāṁsakas, a ritual was a teleologi-
cal organization of diverse details, such as offer-
tories, divinities, ritual chants and implements,
preparatory acts, procedures, etc., around the cen-
tral role of the “principal” sacrificial action, that is,
an action such as pouring milk or offering a rice
cake into the sacrificial fire. When these details
were properly organized according to the injunc-
tions of the Brāhmaṇa texts, prompted by the
desire for happiness on the part of a sacrificial
patron, there occurred a “transubstantiation” of
the sacrificial action, which turned from a com-
mon worldly thing to what Mīmāṁsakas called
dharma. The Mīmāṁsā school associated with
Kumārila Bhaṭṭa (ca. early seventh century)
interpreted dharma as a means of human good,
comparable, for instance, to wealth: both were
instruments of human happiness. The specific
4 Moksa
difference of dharma as a means of happiness
among other such means was that it harnessed
causal relations that were not empirically known:
whereas wealth was “visibly” related to human
prosperity, ritual as its visible result had only
ashes, and its real result was future and not evi-
dently related to it. The causal relation was know-
able, but solely from the Veda. AVedic injunction,
for instance, “He who wants heaven should sacri-
fice,” commands that a sacrifice be performed, but
it also discloses that the sacrifice in time will result
in “heaven.”
This is an important principle to bear in mind
when we move to Sāṅkhya and Yoga: happiness is
possible, and there are “visible” and “Vedic”
means to it. The Vedic means typically is action,
not in insolation, but as the key element of a
composite event.
Mīmāṁsakas called the general good that a
ritual brings about “heaven,” svarga. Śabara dis-
cusses the meaning of “heaven” under MS 6.1.1-
3, and rejects two prima facie views: heaven is not
a place that one goes to in the hereafter nor a
pleasurable substance that ordinary people habit-
ually call heaven, such as “silken clothes, per-
fumes, or sixteen-year-old girls.” The second do
not qualify because the common meaning of
heaven is “happiness,” and substances are some-
times pleasurable and sometimes disagreeable:
happiness is not their essential characteristic. So,
if svarga is not a place in the hereafter, it is no Fred
Astaire heaven either. Śabara’s conclusion is that
“heaven” stands for the state of happiness pure
and simple, what cannot be described otherwise
without the pain of contradiction. Kumārila added
important clarifications to this definition: although
heaven did not stand for a place in the hereafter,
the state of happiness that is heaven could only be
enjoyed in another, future life, in a body fit for the
enjoyment of happiness pure and simple: obvi-
ously this did not preclude, but rather required, a
place in the hereafter. Further, heaven was not just
happiness, but unexcelled happiness, not only
simple but also absolute.
As I said above, Kumārila’s definition of
heaven became one of the main definitions of
liberation as well, in virtue of which Advaitins
and Buddhists found it appropriate to argue
˙
against ritual as a means of mokṣa. Another
famous Vedāntin, Bhāskara (ca. 750–850 AD),
on the other hand, claimed that ritual was an
equal collaborator to meditation in the pursuit of
liberation, and in general all Hindu doctrines of
liberation had to address the question of ritual’s
soteriological significance relative to knowledge
and meditation.
Brahman and the Upanisads
˙
The doctrine of liberation in the Upaniṣads devel-
oped against the ritual worldview of the
Brāhmaṇas. We mentioned in the introduction
the idea of puṇar-mṛtyu or second death, and we
can make the general statement that the goal of the
old Vedic ritual worldview was “immortality.” An
often-quoted line from the Ṛgveda says, “We have
drunk the soma, we have become immortal,”
ápāma sómam amŕ̥tā abhūma (8.48.3, [3],
p. 1229). It has been proposed that this immortal-
ity initially meant just a good life that is not
prematurely cut short, a full life of 100 years
([6], pp. 42–44), but by the time of the Upaniṣads,
there is little doubt that it meant eternal life in
heaven.
In the Upaniṣads, then, we find a well-defined
concern that there may occur a loss of the said
immortality. The rationale of the concern is simple
and well expressed in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad
(ChU, 8.1.5-6, [25], p. 275): the hereafter is won
by ritual, which is a form of action; we know
empirically that worlds won by action are com-
monly lost, as in the case of inhabited territories; it
follows that the world of the hereafter can also be
lost, for the simple reason that it was won by
action. A more sophisticated statement of the
same concern is found in the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad
(MU 1.2.1-12, [25], pp. 439–441). The Upaniṣad
indulges in a long diatribe against ritual, but the
knockdown argument is given in verse 12: that
which is not made, eternal, cannot be won by that
which is made (kṛta), that is, by action (karma).
Thus, we find in the Upaniṣads (ChU 5.10; BĀU
6.2) a new doctrine which says that the lifelong
performance of ritual results in merit that leads
one after death through the “course of the
Moksa
˙
forefathers” (pitṛ-yāna) to the “world of the fore-
fathers” (pitṛ-loka), which is the sphere of the
moon that is now identified with soma, the para-
digmatic ritual item and the drink of the gods. One
remains in this world so long this merit lasts, but
upon its exhaustion falls back to earth and is
reborn.
Parallel to the doctrine of action as ritual that
produces merit, there develops a doctrine of moral
valence of action in general, and the Upaniṣad
says that the rebirth of the ritual agent who has
fallen from the world of the forefathers depends
on his conduct (caraṇa) in pre-heaven life: those
of agreeable conduct are reborn in good families
of the three upper castes, whereas those of foul
conduct are reborn from dogs, pigs, or outcast
women (ChU 5.10.7). Two kinds of action or
karma, thus, determine one’s future, ritual and
“ordinary.” Both were associated with rebirth,
but it was the first that was the specific problem
for immortality. The Upaniṣadic solution to
this problem was the doctrine of Brahman, but
already in the older Upaniṣads we find this doc-
trine in two radically different variants, one
of which had a Chāndogya core and another
one in Yājñavalkya’s teachings from the Bṛhad-
Āraṇyaka. We will focus on the first and state how
the second was different.
The ChU and BĀU passages about ritual and
the world of the forefathers that we discussed
contrast the ritualists with another group‚ those
who take the “course of the gods” (deva-yāna)
and reach the “world of Brahman” (brahma-
loka, on which more below), wherefrom they do
not return. Not much more is said about them,
except that they understand the process of ascend-
ing to the world of the forefathers and rebirth in
the human world as a kind of a ritual and meditate
on “faith as austerity” in the wilderness. The
eighth chapter of ChU, however, picks up this
topic of no return further. The chapter presents
the teaching of the Self which is free from all
evil, old age and death, and hunger and thirst,
whose desires and intentions are “true” (satya-
kāma, satya-saṅkalpa), that is, effortlessly
accomplished. This Self is identified generally
by all Vedāntins with Brahman, but is also one’s
own Self in some important way: in fact, that is a
5
crucial requirement of the teaching. The Self has
four states, three of which are commonly known,
waking, dream, and deep sleep, which the
Upaniṣad calls “perfect calm,” samprasāda. The
third is particularly important, because it is a state
that lacks transitive awareness, for which reason
one does not experience the faults of waking and
dream, such as hunger and thirst: it is a state
beyond the reach of karma – one must be aware
of cognitive content to be liable to experiences –
and the Upaniṣad describes it as a dike that keeps
the worlds, the different states of the Self, from
collapsing into one another (ChU 8.4).
Although this state of the Self is instrumental
for freedom from karma, it is not the ultimate
state, nor is it desirable, because one is not aware
of oneself at all: “But this Self does not know itself
fully as ‘I am this,’ nor does it know any of these
beings here. It has become completely annihi-
lated” (ChU 8.11.1). The Self, therefore, must
reemerge in its fourth state with its cognitive
faculties restored (8.12.3-5). This fourth state of
the Self is liberation; or rather, it is a state predi-
cated on liberation, but something more as well:
“Shaking off evil, like a horse its hair, and freeing
myself, like the moon from Rāhu’s jaws, I, the
perfected self (ātman), cast of the body, the imper-
fect, and attain the world of brahman” (ChU 8.13,
[25], p. 287). Liberation, strictly speaking, is the
characteristic feature of the third state: one is no
longer liable to faults, pāpa. The fourth state,
however, is the attainment of the world of Brah-
man, brahma-loka, through the course of the
gods, deva-yāna, and it is properly called anāvṛtti,
no return or revolution in the cycle of transmigra-
tion. This is so because it is the counterpart of the
elevation to the world of the forefathers, from
which one had to return upon the exhaustion of
merit.
We should be very clear on this: the Upaniṣadic
doctrine of liberation is a doctrine that pertains
solely to the world of the Veda, not a general
theory of reincarnation. There is parallel system
of transmigration for those who are not a part of
Vedic society or those who commit grievous sins:
“Then there are those proceeding on neither of
these two paths – they become the tiny creatures
revolving here ceaselessly. ‘Be born! Die!’ – that
6 Moksa
is a third state” (ChU 5.10.8, [25], p. 237). The
BĀU specifies: they become worms, insects, or
snakes (6.2.16).
How does one reach brahma-loka? One must
“search out” and “know distinctly” this Self that is
free from all evil, old age and death, and hunger
and thirst, whose desires and intentions are “true”
(ChU 8.1; 8.7.1). As I said above, Vedāntins have
identified this Self with Brahman and have
interpreted “searching out” and “knowing” the
Self as meditating on it. Since this Self was
one’s own Self, then, reaching brahma-loka was
predicated on meditation on Brahman as one’s
own Self. The ChU stipulates an additional con-
dition: brahma-loka is open only for those who
practice chastity, brahmacarya (ChU 8.5). It is
also important to note that this account, though
critical of ritual, did not involve a wholesale rejec-
tion of ritual. In a different section of the
Chāndogya (5.24), it is said that if one performs
the daily fire ritual, Agnihotra, with knowledge
of “the Self which is common to all men”
(vaiśvānara), “all the bad things in him are burnt
up like the tip of a reed stuck into a fire” ([25],
p. 245). The commentators on the Brahma-Sūtra
have commonly referenced this text as a statement
of the principle that ritual which is performed
along with meditation on Brahman has a cathartic
function – it removes bad karma – and thus fosters
meditation. Thus, the meditation on the Self was
supposed to be practiced in addition to the basic
Brahmanical ritual, the daily fire sacrifice.
The Self that one must search out and know
distinctly is in one’s heart, and from this heart
108 channels (nāḍī) issue forth. These channels
form a continuity with the sunrays, and through
them with the sun itself, one of them goes through
the top of the skull. He who had searched out and
known distinctly the Self ascends this top channel
at death and through the sunrays and the so-called
course of the gods (deva-yāna) reaches the sun
itself. The sun is the door to the world of Brah-
man, and Om is the entrance password (ChU 8.6).
The course of the gods is delineated along with the
course of the forefathers in several Upaniṣads, and
quite variously so. We need not go into these
details, but we should recognize the continuity
of the heart with the sun: that is the key item that
˙
accommodates motion to brahma-loka, through
the sun its door.
The world of Brahman itself is described as a
real place, with lakes, palaces, etc. (ChU 8.5.3-4;
8.14). The Kauṣī taki Upaniṣad presents even
Brahman of brahma-loka as a personal divinity
that sits on a couch as it greets the liberated Self
(KU 1.5). The Self is said to “manifest” in
brahma-loka its “own form” (ChU 8.12.2),
which must be read as appearing as Brahman in
kind, not losing one’s separate existence in Brah-
man. One is the Self free from faults and of effort-
lessly accomplished desires, in the sense of being
carved out from the same slab, so to speak. This is
so because the Self gets to enjoy “with women,
chariots, relatives” (ChU 8.12.3), at one’s mere
resolve and desire. The Taittirī ya adds that one
enjoys “along with the wise Brahman,” another
indication of keeping individual existence intact
(TU 2.1.1). Although the Self is not embodied, it
is not quite formless either: the ChU compares it
to a rain cloud, lightning, and thunder (8.12.2).
Additionally, the liberated Self wins the freedom
of motion throughout the heavens of the Vedic
world. The KU, further, says that the itinerant to
the brahma-loka is overwhelmed there by the
fragrance, flavor, radiance, and glory of Brahman
(1.5). All this is to say that this kind of liberation
was very much like heaven the goal of ritual, and
Hajime Nakamura says: “The details of the
description of this realm of liberation are almost
unparalleled in the writings of any Indian school”
([23], p. 531). This is true in comparison with
Buddhism, Sāṅkhya-Yoga, Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, and
Advaita Vedānta, but the traditions of Vaishna-
vism and theistic Vedānta have further developed
the same line of thought.
So, this account of liberation had solved the
problem of impermanency of ritual by replacing
action with Brahman the Self. The Self was eter-
nal, “immortal,” and free from the faults of
embodiment, such as hunger and thirst. This
Self, however, was also satya-kāma and satya-
saṅkalpa, of “true resolves and desires,” and
these were the same desires that the ritual agent
was hoping to win: the presence of one’s fore-
fathers and relatives, heavenly delights. By tap-
ping into the eternal Brahman, the meditator in
Moksa
˙
effect got the same results that the ritual performer
was hoping for, with permanence as the added
value. Liberation, thus, meant getting rid of the
body, “the appendage” as the ChU puts it (8.12.3),
but the attained state involved the positive expe-
rience of enjoyment in a very palpable sense. This
was liberation as bliss explicit.
The Brahma-Sūtra systematization of the
Upaniṣads based its doctrine of liberation by and
large on this account ([23], pp. 524–532). We find
a very different notion of liberation in
Yājñavalkya’s teaching to king Janaka in books
three and four of the BĀU. Very briefly,
Yājñavalkya talks there about three states of the
Self, waking, dream, and deep sleep, not four like
in the ChU. The third is the ultimate state, perfect
calm in which the Self is freed from all the good
and bad that it may experience in the other two
states. This state is one of non-duality and absence
of transitive awareness: it is a state in which the
Self could cognize, being naturally the cognitive
agent, but does not cognize anything because
there is no second thing which could become an
object to awareness (BĀU 4.3.31-2). Because of
this, this state of the Self was not one of “true
desires and resolves” as in ChU, but a state where
“all desires are fulfilled, where the Self is the only
desire, and which is free from desires” (BĀU
4.3.21). The logic behind the difference is simple:
no objective awareness, no desires. Naturally, the
attainments of liberation that we saw in the previ-
ous account, predicated on “true desires” and
objective awareness, are absent from this account.
Yājñavalkya, in fact, called this state of non-
duality characteristic of deep sleep brahma-loka
(BĀU 4.3.32). This brahma-loka was, thus, very
different from that of the first account: it was the
Self itself, and if one knew this Self, there was also
no need to wait for postmortem liberation. The
final attainment was nothing but getting into a
state where one does not see any diversity: it
was attaining the perfect calm of deep sleep and
non-transitive awareness while still living (BĀU
4.4.6-7). Liberation, thus, did not involve going to
brahma-loka via the course of the gods. The Self
itself was the end of the pursuit, and one who
knows the Self “becomes a Brahmin – free from
evil, free from stain, free from doubt. He is the
7
world of brahman, Your Majesty, and I have taken
you to him” (BĀU 4.4.23, [25], p. 127).
These two accounts have arguably served as
the basis for the two strands of later Vedānta,
theistic and monistic.
Sāṅkhya
In the philosophy of liberation of Sāṅkhya, we can
see most directly the therapeutic paradigm in its
opposition to the notion of unexcelled felicity as
the highest good that we saw in the Mīmāṁsā
doctrine of heaven. One of the principal commen-
tators on the Sāṅkhya-Kārikā (SK), Gauḍapāda
(ca. sixth century AD), remarks in his Bhāṣya:
“Everyone, knowingly or unknowingly, desires
after the cessation of the chain of transmigration”
(on SK 17, [20], p. 92). This is a full reversal of the
Mīmāṁsā axiom that all men strive after happi-
ness. The human condition for Sāṅkhya was not
that of good desires that prompt one to seek felic-
ity through ritual, but that of transmigration or
rebirth that is essentially suffering. Transmigra-
tion and suffering, on their part, are predicated on
bondage, the opposite to liberation, and bondage
is a “contact” of the Self with matter and its
products: embodiment. This contact is occasioned
by “ignorance” or the failure to distinguish the
Self from matter. Liberation is a state of perfect
isolation (kaivalya, this is the favorite term for
liberation in Sāṅkhya-Yoga) of the Self from mat-
ter, and it can be attained just through fully under-
standing matter, the Self, and their distinction. Let
us expand on this.
The Sāṅkhya-Kārikā (SK) of Īśvarakṛṣṇa
(ca. 350–450 AD), the principal Sāṅkhya text,
opens with the statement that there are three
kinds of suffering, which the commentators iden-
tify as personal, bodily and mental; caused by
other living beings; and environmental. The
human condition is to seek relief from such suf-
fering, but it is only Sāṅkhya that provides a
solution that is absolute, certain to work, and
final, preventing a relapse into suffering. The SK
considers two other solutions, known to us, again,
from Mīmāṁsā: visible and Vedic means. They
are both found inadequate. One may, for instance,
8 Moksa
use medicine to mitigate bodily pain, have some
wine and enjoy with girls to get rid of psycholog-
ical discomfort, organize society to solve interper-
sonal problems, and build shelters for protection
from environmental troubles, but these are uncer-
tain means that may or may not work, and when
they do work, their solution is only temporary.
Since they do not address the core reason of suf-
fering, one is perpetually reborn and subjugated to
the three kinds of suffering ever anew. The Vedic
means, which refers here to ritual by which one
attains heaven, is likewise inadequate, for several
reasons, but primarily because it is hampered by
decay: the good karma accumulated through rit-
ual, being a product, is exhausted in time and is
not a final solution to suffering. In fact, Sāṅkhya
had a distinct category for that bondage which was
caused by Vedic ritual, dākṣaṇika or pertaining to
honoraria that one pays to priests (SK 44,
commentaries).
To appreciate the Sāṅkhya solution to suffer-
ing, we must now introduce its ontological cate-
gories. These are 25 in all, principles to which
everything can be reduced, and 2 of them are
really basic. There is primordial matter, mūla-
prakṛti or pradhāna, the stuff of which the world
is ultimately made. This matter is “non-manifest,”
empirically unavailable but knowable through
inference from general principles. Through a
complex process of creation that we cannot go
into, this primordial matter transforms into
23 other principles: the intellect (mahat or
buddhi), which can be understood as the non-
personal accommodating principle of cognition;
the ego (ahaṅkāra) that facilitates self-
identification; 10 cognitive and active faculties;
the mind (manas) as the faculty of attention;
5 kinds of sense object – sound, smell, form,
taste, and touch; and 5 gross elements: ether, air,
fire, water, and earth. All individual things in the
world are reducible to these categories: for
instance, trees are predominantly earth, the sight
of a tree is form, the ascertainment of this form as
a true cognition is intellect, etc. These 23 are
called “the manifest” because they are empirically
knowable. The “manifest” and the “non-manifest”
are different in several ways, but it is more impor-
tant to appreciate what they share: they are
˙
creative insofar as other things come from them;
they are objective insofar as they are real things
that can become cognitive content; but they are
insentient (SK 10).
Finally, there is the Self, puruṣa, which is the
principle that is present in every sentient creature.
The Self is multiple, one for every creature, and it
is sentient essentially. However, it cannot be sen-
tient attributively: in Sāṅkhya, cognition happens
when the intellect assumes the form of the object
and thus “ascertains” it, and that cannot happen
to the Self, because it would make it changeable
and liable to corruption. The Self is, therefore, of
the nature of “witness” to which things are
shown, but to which he cannot react. It is also
not “objective,” insofar as it cannot become a
direct object of awareness, but is known inferen-
tially (SK 11, 19).
We can now define bondage: it is embodiment,
a “union” or “contact” (samyoga) of the Self with
the various products of matter, manifesting pri-
marily through a sense of personal agency (SK 20,
21). A crucial characteristic of the Self is that it
essentially aloofs from matter, from which fol-
lows that it could not be an agent, and a general
Sāṅkhya principle expressed as early as the
Bhagavad Gītā (3.21) was that agency belongs
to matter. Agency, nevertheless, requires sen-
tience, which matter does not have but the Self
does, and there obtains a “union” between the two
which is compared to the union of the lame and
the blind, who jointly accomplish that which they
cannot do individually. What they accomplish is
creation, or the evolution of primordial matter into
the remaining 23 categories (SK 23). Now, this
union obviously cannot be what we commonly
understand from the word, because we just said
that the Self is essentially aloof. It is, rather, a state
in which matter “presents itself” before the Self,
the witness, takes on its artistic garb and puts on a
show, and through such presentation the Self
becomes liable to identify with any of her features,
like any good spectator might. Such identification
is ignorance, avidyā, resulting in embodiment. It is
with this in mind that Gauḍapāda says: bondage
has ignorance as its cause (on SK 44, [20], p. 156).
The real purpose of the presentation, however,
is not for the Self to become bound, but liberated.
Moksa
˙
Sense enjoyment and involvement in the world do
become possible for the Self in this way, but so
does liberation (SK 58). Liberation becomes pos-
sible only when the Self can witness the artistic
show of matter, go through its products one by
one, and understand that he is none of them, yet is
existent: in Sāṅkhya, the means of absolute and
final end to suffering that is liberation is discrim-
inative knowledge of matter, its products, and the
Self; or the insight that the Self is neither matter
nor any of its products. This is an insight obtained
not by meditation nor from scripture, but through
reduction of the world to its basic elements, for
instance, the understanding that things such as
pots are just transformations of earth, the inferen-
tial reduction of the basic principles to primordial
matter, and the inferential knowledge that there
must be a conscious Self that is different from
matter. The last comes as a necessary inference
from the fact that matter and its products appear
sentient, but we know that they are not so – think
of someone who had just died – from which it
follows that there must be a conscious principle
behind them (SK 6 and commentaries). And when
all the details are worked out, “just as a dancing
girl ceases to dance after showing herself to the
spectators, likewise primordial matter ceases to
operate after showing herself to the Self” (SK 59).
Liberation in Sāṅkhya, thus, is a thoroughly
philosophical enterprise, and all other means are
inadequate because they do not address the core
problem, that of ignorance. Nevertheless, there
are several assumptions in this account and some
awfully hard questions prompted by it. An under-
lying assumption is that the union of the Self with
matter is not an event that has origin in time, but is
logically required to make sense of bondage: it is,
in fact, impossible for the Self to misidentify with
matter, because that presupposes awareness as
content, which we said was impossible. The Self
is also not a single principle, like Brahman, so that
creation could ensue from its contact with matter:
logically it would have to be the case that every
puruṣa creates its own world. Moreover, the very
constitutive nature of the Self prevents the possi-
bility of bondage: each individual Self is an
9
omnipresent entity that has no parts and cannot,
by definition, contact matter. The Self is also, as
we saw, constitutively aloof, thus eo ipso incapa-
ble of bondage.
In view of these problems, the SK says that the
Self is, really, neither bound nor released and that
it is solely matter that binds and releases itself
through knowledge (SK [62–63]). To elaborate,
the cognition of identification does not occur to
the Self, but occurs in the intellect and is made a
thing through being illuminated by the sentience
of the Self. Likewise, the liberating knowledge is
the intellect that presents all experiences to the
Self, and given that its nature is ascertainment of
an object – taking its shape – liberations take place
when the intellect ascertains the difference
between primordial matter and the Self (SK 37).
Vācaspati Miśra (ca. ninth century AD) adds that
the intellect “assumes the form of the Self,” but
“as it were,” since the Self is not an object whose
form the intellect can take. As Krishna Warrier
concludes, “The nature of the Puruṣa’s bondage
remains mystery at heart” ([38], p. 52).
Now, an important point to note is that once the
Self “understands” its difference from primordial
matter and its products, and loses interest in her,
there obtains a state in which the two remain in a
union so long the body remains in existence,
through the force of habit but without an interest
in one another. This is for all purposes liberation,
since the root cause of embodiment has been
undone and the karma that keeps embodiment
rolling, being an outgrowth of ignorance, has
been destroyed. There remains, nevertheless, a
karmic inertia so long the body remains, a state
comparable to the potter’s wheel continuing to
revolve even though the potter no longer spins it,
due to the momentum of the past impulse (SK 67).
While the SK does not use the term, we can
describe such state as jī van-mukti or liberation
while living. When this inertia stops at death,
there obtains liberation which is absolute and
final (SK 68). These two descriptors are intention-
ally used by Īśvarakṛṣṇa: we will remember that
the visible and the Vedic means could not provide
an absolute and final solution to suffering.
10
Yoga
It is sometimes said that Sāṅkhya provides the
metaphysical frame but that the Yoga system of
Patañjali (ca. 300 AD) provides the method of
liberation. While it is true that the two systems
were closely related, their methods of liberation
were different. In Yoga, it was not enough to have
a discriminating knowledge of the Self, because
that did not prevent unwanted identification: what
was required for liberation was direct experience.
Consequently, Yoga pinpointed the operative
problem elsewhere. Let us briefly elaborate.
Yoga shared most of the categories with
Sāṅkhya. One significant difference was that
Yoga did not talk about several faculties of one’s
psyche – intellect, etc. – but about one citta or
“mind,” representing the totality of one’s inner
life, except for the Self or puruṣa. The problem
of false identity was like in Sāṅkhya, ignorance,
specifically identification of the pure, blissful,
eternal Self, with that which is not the Self and
has the opposite characteristics (YS 2.4); it was
eventually ignorance that had to be undone. But,
Yoga considered inferential and scriptural knowl-
edge to be secondhand and inherently weaker than
perceptual experience (YS 1.49): in this, it dif-
fered on one hand from Sāṅkhya and on another
from Vedānta. The inferential Sāṅkhya knowl-
edge of the Self was general, concerning a Self
as a category behind any living being, and not the
individual puruṣa that is me. Perceptual knowl-
edge of particulars would always defeat inferen-
tial knowledge of universals: one may know
inferentially to be the Self, but perception would
continue presenting objects that made one liable
to identification.
Percepts, in fact, have an easy way of getting to
anyone and causing unwholesome effects,
through what Yoga called “impressions,”
saṁskāras. Impressions are percepts from the
present and past lives that have left a mark on
the mind in the form of memories that have
become habits and determine one’s behavior
([5], pp. 44–47). A percept of the same kind
activates an impression, which gives rise to what
Yoga calls “psychological torments” (kleśas) in
relation to it. The torments are emotions that
Moksa
˙
characterize mental states, such as self-identity,
passion, aversion, etc. (YS 2.3-9). We may illus-
trate this with a wonderful verse from Kālidāsa’s
drama Śakuntalā: “When even a happy man is
filled with longing, on seeing pleasing sights or
hearing sweet words, then, surely, his mind
recalls, unconsciously, deeply felt friendships of
former births” ([17], p. 225). These torments are
directly related to karma: they are results of pre-
vious actions that were associated with percepts,
and they prompt one to act further. Thus, sense
objects could easily overpower discriminative
knowledge.
Now, like in Sāṅkhya, liberation in Yoga was a
state of isolation of the Self, kaivalya, “remaining
of the spectator in its own nature” (YS 1.3). If the
Self is not in its own nature, it will be liable to
identifying with any mental state (vṛtti). Yoga had
classified these mental states in five kinds,
through the criterion of their correspondence to
external things: knowledge, error, fancy, deep
sleep, and memory (YS 1.4-11). To illustrate
these briefly, the vision of a tree that corresponds
to a real external tree is a mental state of knowl-
edge; the vision of a man that corresponds to an
external post is a mental state of error; the idea that
the sun sets is a mental state of fancy; the absence
of transitive awareness is deep sleep; dreams are a
form of memory. The Self can identify with any
such state and in fact constantly identifies as states
are presented to it; the mental states, further, are
not passive states, but have the nature of the
psychological torments. The vision of a beautiful
woman is not just that: it is a form that can pro-
voke passion by activating appropriate
impressions.
A step toward the solution of this problem of
identification is sense control, that is, preventing
external objects from coming before the Self as
mental states. However, the mind has an endless
stock of mental states in the form of memories,
impressed on it since time immemorial, that it can
mull over, without external objects. The real solu-
tion to the problem of identification, therefore, is
to preclude the possibility of identification by
putting an end to the mental states altogether.
That is Patañjali’s definition of Yoga at the open-
ing of the YS (1.2): “Yoga is a suspension of the
Moksa
˙
mental states,” or “stilling the mind.” Such sus-
pension is achieved by progressively reducing the
scope of mental focus though an arduous practice
of meditation and related disciplines, as well as
the cultivation of personal virtues that can be
subsumed under dispassion (YS 1.12).
The practice is commonly described as having
eight “limbs” or constituents (aṣṭāṅga-yoga, YS
2.29), and it begins by observing two sets of
disciplines, called yama and niyama, abstentions
such as non-violence, and practices such as aus-
terity. These are ten in all, but the last three
niyamas are the most important: austerity
(tapas), the recitation of Om and other mantras
(svādhyāya), and dedication to God (ī śvara-
praṇidhāna). Patañjali groups these three under
the heading of kriyā-yoga (YS 2.1), and their
general purpose is to cleanse the mind by attenu-
ating the psychological torments that characterize
mental states ([14], p. 115). They cannot quite get
rid of them, but are compared to the shaking off
the gross dirt from a piece of cloth, such that
meditation can work on the deeper stains ([14],
p. 131). To practice meditation, one first needs to
attain a state where his sitting posture (āsana) is
stable and comfortable: this is required so that the
yogin will not be disturbed by dualities such as
heat and cold (YS 2.46-48). When such stability
and comfort have been achieved, there should
commence the practice of breath control
(prāṇāyama), which culminates in the ability of
total suspension of respiration at will (YS 2.49-
53). This practice is followed by sensory depriva-
tion (pratyāhāra), achieved by isolating the mind
from the sense objects through controlling the
faculty of attention (YS 2.54-55).
The last three practices are all meditation
proper and can be described as progressive inten-
sification of one’s absorption. The first stage is
called dhāraṇā, concentration on an object of
choice, for instance, God (ī śvara), where the
mind is largely focused but can still be disrupted
by other mental states (YS 3.1). Next is dhyāna, in
which there is a continuous, uninterrupted mental
flow of the same notion of the meditational object
(YS 3.2). The final stage is that of samādhi, where
the mind is fully restrained, fully fixed on the
meditational object not as a flow, but as a single
11
thought (YS 3.3). This samādhi, however, was an
intricate matter in Yoga, admitting of two kinds
and several stages. The first kind is called sabī ja
or samprajñāta, where the mind is fully focused
on the object, whose scope is progressively
reduced: from gross, to its cognitive content with-
out the objective counterpart, to mere mind, at a
point where the mind has become so stilled and
cleansed of impressions that it reflects perfectly
back the consciousness of the Self (B: [67]).
Alongside the stilling of the mind, there progres-
sively develops the cognition of distinction of the
Self from the mind, and at this ultimate stage of
sabī ja-samādhi, this cognition becomes perfect.
This is awareness of pure subjectivity and differ-
ence from all else. However, it is still a form of
cognitive content facilitated by the mind, and in
the second kind of samādhi, called nirbī ja or
asamprajñāta, the Self is no longer aware of any
external entity, including the mind. This is a state
of non-transitive consciousness, the “remaining of
the spectator in its own nature,” even beyond
discrimination. While the mind is not destroyed
in this state, it is deconstructed, and the impres-
sions remain latent, “as good as burnt seed.”
Like in Sāṅkhya, when such a state had been
reached, the past karma is destroyed, and one is
for all purposes liberated. However, the impres-
sions are just “as good as” burnt seed, and there
remains the possibility, however slight, of their
regerminating. Therefore, it is paramount for per-
fect meditation to be maintained till the end of life.
It is difficult to say, finally, what Yogic libera-
tion was as experience. The essential nature of the
Self is described as conscious and blissful
(YS 2.5), and the description of liberation as a
happy state is a common trope, but the absence of
transitive awareness makes the experience of bliss
hard if not impossible to conceptualize.
Nyāya-Vaiśesika
˙
It is apposite here to add a few notes on liberation
in the schools of Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika. We will not
go into the details of suffering, embodiment, and
its causes, as they are largely shared with
Sāṅkhya-Yoga, nor the means of liberation, but
12
focus solely on liberation as a state. Now,
Naiyāyikas rejected the claim of Sāṅkya-Yoga
and Vedānta that the Self was a knower essentially
or substantively and claimed that the Self only had
attributive awareness: essentially, the Self was
insentient, like a stone ([38], p. 17). Further, this
attributive awareness was objective, that is, nec-
essarily involving cognitive content, and it was
not an attribute of the Sāṅkhyan intellect: con-
sciousness was an attribute of the Self, and the
Self directly experienced all states that the
Sāṅkhya-Yoga would term mental, pertaining to
buddhi. Gautama in his Nyāya-Sūtra 1.1.10
explicitly says that desire, aversion, volition, plea-
sure, pain, and consciousness are attributes of the
Self, and the Vaiśeṣika-Sūtras of Kaṇāda were
even more naturalistic in attributing physiological
functions such as respiration to the Self ([38],
p. 15).
Mental states happen to the Self when it is in
contact with the mind, manas, which is sort of a
mix of the faculty of attention that must be present
for external perception to happen, and a sense of
cognizing internal states such memory, volition,
etc. Liberation is the complete cessation of the
attributes of the Self from NS 1.1.10, listed
above, and it happens when the Self is separated
from the body and the mind, upon the destruction
of ignorance and karma. When the connection of
the Self with the mind is severed, the Self no
longer has an instrument of consciousness, and
with that no way to experience the suffering that
was the problem that needed addressing in the
doctrine of liberation. With that, however, the
Self, essentially unconscious, lost not only the
cognition of pain but of pleasure as well.
Vātsyāyana the first commentator on the NS dis-
cusses this at length. He calls the state of liberation
“bliss,” but denies that it is experiential bliss of
any kind: that would be impossible because the
Self had lost the instruments of experience. The
bliss that is liberation, therefore, is the mere
absence of pain ([29], p. 28–29). Thus, the Self
of Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika in liberation is literally
“stoned,” that is, petrified.
The favorite Nyāya term for liberation was
niḥśreyasa, the highest good, but its understand-
ing of the state of liberation, as we just saw, was
Moksa
˙
thoroughly negative: in later and more technical
Nyāya jargon, it was characterized as
dhvaṁsābhāva, a state of absence through
destruction (of ignorance and the karma that
keeps one embodied), which is brought into
being but is subsequently permanent, like the
broken pot that has a history but no future. One
influential Naiyāyika, however, the Kashmiri
Bhāsarvajña (ca. 860–920 AD, [29], p. 9),
affirmed that the state of liberation involved not
only the cessation of suffering but also the posi-
tive experience of bliss, predicated on the Self’s
remaining a conscious entity ([29], p. 29; [38],
pp. 31–32). How does this square with conscious-
ness being an attribute of the Self whose appear-
ance requires the contact with the mind,
embodiment? Karl Potter suggests that
Bhāsarvajña’s religious convictions are important
for assessing his philosophical contributions
([29], pp. 29, 399). He was a member of the
Pāśupatas, a Śaiva denomination in whose doc-
trine the Self at liberation attains the characteris-
tics of Śiva, namely, eternal knowledge and
pleasure. Although these are acquired, not innate,
they are nevertheless permanent ([29], p. 410).
Advaita Vedānta
The Advaita Vedānta understanding of the Self
was very close to that of Sāṅkhya and Yoga,
except for one crucial difference: whereas the
puruṣas of Sāṅkhya-Yoga were many, the Self in
Advaita Vedānta was one only, identical with
Brahman the great ground of Being and the first
cause. Furthermore, Advaita’s most famous pro-
ponent Śaṅkara Bhagavatpāda (ca. 700–750 AD)
defined liberation like in Sāṅkhya-Yoga: “Libera-
tion is remaining in one’s Self, [a state that fol-
lows] when ignorance that is the ground of desire
and action has ceased” (TUBh, [33], p. 224). But
there was a rider to this statement: since the Self
was Brahman, liberation was Brahman as well.
“The state of liberation is, in fact, Brahman itself”
(commentary on the Brahma-Sūtra [BSBh]
3.4.52, [34], p. 810). Śaṅkara also defined libera-
tion in negative terms, an absence of ignorance
that is the cause of embodiment, but liberation as
Moksa
˙
remaining in the Self was sensu stricto his final
definition. This was so because any negative
determination to his mind risked affinity with the
Nyāya-Mīmāṁsā notion of liberation as a mere
absence, which involved a problematic theory of
the Self and precluded the pursuit of liberation
from being a positive undertaking. The removal
of ignorance, therefore, was better understood as
the final means that leads to liberation, not the
proper description of the state itself.
Like in Sāṅkhya-Yoga, ignorance for Śaṅkara
was a cognitive error, a superimposition of char-
acteristics of the Self to that which is not the Self
and vice versa, but because Brahman was the only
Self, Śaṅkara’s psychology was a bit more com-
plex. The individual Self was a reflection of Brah-
man in the mirror of the intellect, a something that
is identical with neither of the two, but “just hap-
pens” when they face each other (Upadeśa-
Sāhasrī [US] 1.18.39, [21], p. 176). The charac-
teristic feature of the reflection was the thought “I
am this,” pure subjectivity as it were, a general
superimposition of the intellect over Brahman and
a result of ignorance, but because the Self was
one, this reflection was not sufficient for the
appearance of the individual Self: ignorance was
the maker of the category, but full individuation
required two additional factors: desire that is
determined by impressions of actions from the
present and past lives, and karma that is a result
of these desires but further reinforces ignorance
(US 1.10.9, [21], p. 124). These two were also
taken from Sāṅkhya-Yoga, but whereas there they
were impurities of the mind, for Śaṅkara they
were much more: they constituted the individual
Self. Consequently, it was not enough simply to
realize that the Self was not any of the possible
identification points provided by matter and its
transformations: it was further required to realize
that the Self was one and only, that it was Brah-
man. This knowledge, further, was not available
either from inference as in Sāṅkhya or meditative
insight as in Yoga, but solely from the Upaniṣads,
from its identity statements such as “I am Brah-
man” (BĀU 1.4.10) and “You are that”
(ChU 6.8.7).
In addition to this, the whole discourse of igno-
rance, superimposition, individuation, etc. was
13
not a description of a factual state of affairs. Brah-
man being pure knowledge could never be igno-
rant, and Advaitins joined Buddhists in talking
about two kinds of reality: conventional
(vyavahāra), one that we are familiar with and is
a necessary requirement for human dealings, and
absolute (paramārtha), or how things really are.
Brahman was, in fact, always free; it could not be
in illusion, yet the talk of embodiment, illusion,
and the like was necessary for experiencing the
state of liberation [15]. The process of liberation,
thus, was a process of anamnesis or remembrance
of something one already knows, but is just not
present to memory, and liberation itself was an
attainment only in the manner of speaking. The
witty Sureśvara said that it was like getting the
necklace that has been on one’s neck all along or
escaping the demon that is one’s own shadow.
Neither of the two are real attainment or avoid-
ance, yet something does happen on both occa-
sions (Naiṣkarmya-Siddhi [NS] 1.31-4). One has
forgotten a true state of affairs – logically, not
temporally – and needs to be reminded. To get
the necklace, one simply has to get it.
This meant that in Śaṅkara’s system, like in
Sāṅkhya, liberation could follow solely as a result
of knowledge (jñāna). However, Śaṅkara was a
Vedic theologian, with a commitment to the whole
Vedic corpus as a means of human good. All
traditions of Vedānta recognized a positive contri-
bution of Vedic ritual in the pursuit of liberation:
the classical Vedānta model of practice was
known as jñāna-karma-samuccaya, a combina-
tion of “knowledge” and action. Other Vedāntins
by jñāna meant meditation on Brahman based on
Upaniṣadic passages, not knowledge as under-
standing. They also theorized the obligatory rit-
uals (nitya-karma) either as assistants to
meditation, subordinate but indispensable, or, as
in the case of Bhāskara, as equal partners; in either
case, this meant that ritual had to be practiced
alongside meditation for the second to be success-
ful. Śaṅkara’s tradition rejected both: jñāna was
knowledge proper, and ritual could not be
performed alongside knowledge, because the sec-
ond presupposed agency, whereas the first denied
it. Yet, as a Vedic theologian, Śaṅkara had to make
accommodation both for meditation and for ritual,
14
and he developed a new model of soteriological
causality, not samuccaya or combination, but
pāramparya or succession. This model says that
a means in the path to liberation culminates in a
result that becomes a further means on its part, in
which the previous means is causally absorbed but
discontinued. Let us now map the path to libera-
tion based on this model, with the help of
Śaṅkara’s student Sureśvara (NS 1.52, [2],
pp. 53–54).
Vedic rituals that are commonly performed for
the attaining of heaven, prompted by desire,
become soteriologically efficacious if they are
performed without an expectation for their result
(niṣkāma) and along with Upaniṣadic meditations
on the so-called saguṇa-brahman, such as the one
of the eighth chapter of the ChU, the Brahman of
“true desires and resolves” in brahma-loka. This
combination of meditation and ritual, or alterna-
tively meditation alone, leads to “purity of exis-
tence” (sattva-śuddhi) that culminates in the
“arising of knowledge” (jñānotpatti). This arising
of knowledge is not a realization of one’s being
Brahman, but the successive appearance of four
prerequisites for the study of Brahman, in a form
of permanent mental dispositions: the ability to
discern between permanent and impermanent
things, more specifically the understanding that
the results of ritual are impermanent and constitu-
tive of transmigration; the possession of virtues
such as mind and sense control, forbearance, faith,
etc.; dispassion; and the desire for liberation
(BSBh 1.1.1). Once these four have appeared,
meditation and disinterested ritual have accom-
plished all that they can accomplish: their results
are carried over and they remain means of libera-
tion, but vicariously so, and there must follow
formal renunciation of all duties and practices
except for those that constitute the ascetic life.
Now begins the engagement solely in the pro-
cess of knowing Brahman. The process can gen-
erally be described as clarifying the purport of the
identity statements of the Upaniṣads by investi-
gating the meaning of the two correlated catego-
ries, the external and causal Brahman and the
inner individual Self (BSBh 4.1.2). The clarifica-
tion of meaning happens with a teacher and pro-
ceeds through two kinds of inquiry, a theological
Moksa
˙
(śravaṇa, hearing) and a philosophical (manana,
reasoning). In the first, the purpose is to establish
what precisely the identity statements mean, by
deliberating on passages from the Upaniṣads
where the two categories are discussed. In the
second, the purpose is to show through analogical
reasoning how the identity statements make sense.
The last is predicated on understanding that they
do so when the two correlated categories primar-
ily denote their literal meaning established in the
theological inquiry, but secondarily and simulta-
neously obtain a figurative meaning, in which they
denote a single entity, an inner Brahman. The
stage that obtains when this is understood is called
“personal experience” (anubhava) or “under-
standing” (avagati). We should not, however,
take it as a mystical experience of any sort: it is
solely an intellectual understanding, in which the
verbal cognition produced by the Upaniṣadic
identity statements obtains certainty. The moment
such certainty happens, further, is the exact
moment when liberation happens (US 2.2.109-
111, [21], pp. 247–48). To be precise in terms of
soteriological causality, such full understanding
leads to the removal of ignorance, and the removal
of ignorance is followed by the state of being the
Self or Brahman.
In this, Śaṅkara differed from other Advaitins,
notably his contemporary Maṇḍana Miśra, who
claimed that the full understanding of the
Upaniṣadic descriptions of Brahman was a form
of mediate awareness, which had to be followed
by meditation in order to become immediate ([1],
p. 333). Such meditation was supposed to be a
third process in the inquiry into Brahman, called
nididhyāsana, and only such meditation could
provide direct experience. Śaṅkara argued that
the immediacy of the knowledge of Brahman
was secured through the fact that the identity
statements of the Upaniṣad were not about an
external something, but about oneself: a favorite
illustration of his is about a boy who makes up to
nine in a headcount, forgetting to count himself.
Once he is reminded verbally that he is the tenth
person, no further means of knowing is required.
Meditation, however, stayed in Advaita Vedānta
through the influence of Vācaspati Miśra, who
wrote the first full commentary on Śaṅkara’s
Moksa
˙
Brahma-Sūtra-Bhāṣya and reintroduced
Maṇḍana’s ideas.
Śaṅkara did, however, accept nididhyāsana as
the third process, not a form of a meditational
absorption, but a structured procedure through
which one would remind oneself what one is
not, in a rather Sāṅkhyan manner. Such a proce-
dure was required because the liberation attained
through the first two processes did not involve
getting rid of the results of karma that had started
bearing fruits: such karma had to be exhausted,
and this meant that one’s body and senses would
continue functioning for some time and would
still require regulation. Thus, there was no medi-
tation on the Self – that was impossible to
Śaṅkara’s mind after full understanding had been
achieved – but there was a need to remind oneself
occasionally what one was not, so as not to be
disturbed by any of the products of ignorance.
In later Advaita Vedānta, this state where one
had been liberated from all karma except the one
that has already started unfolding became explic-
itly known and discussed as jī van-mukti, libera-
tion while living, to be followed by full liberation,
attaining Brahman, at death (an excellent over-
view is available in [24]). The most significant
aspect of living liberation for Śaṅkara himself
was the freedom from the obligation to continue
performing Vedic ritual.
Finally, since Brahman was bliss in nature,
liberation was blissful. That did not mean much,
however, since Brahman was not experiential
bliss, as that would involve duality (commentary
on Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad, 3.9.28.7, [19],
pp. 563–568). Generally, Advaitins have
interpreted this bliss as freedom from suffering
that is transmigration. In other words, bliss just
was liberation, and if Śaṅkara’s Self was not sen-
tient essentially, there would have not been much
to distinguish it from the Self of Vātsyāyana.
Vaisnavism and Śaivism
˙˙
Liberation and the highest good in the various tra-
ditions of Vaiṣṇavism and Śaivism is a vast topic,
through denominations, individual representatives,
15
and history, and here we can but indicate a few
generalities.
The traditions of Vaiṣṇavism and theistic
Vedānta, with all their ontological and theological
differences, developed further the same soterio-
logical line of the Brahma-Sūtra. Brahma-loka
was, really, Vaikuṇṭha the heaven of Viṣṇu or
Goloka the world of Kṛṣṇa, attainable through
meditation that is devotional in nature (bhakti-
yoga) or simply by surrender to the Lord
(prapatti/śaraṇāgati). Liberation was not quite a
disembodied state either: the liberated Self
receives a body made of “pure stuff” (śuddha-
sattva) and has a variety of pleasurable experi-
ences. The Bhāgavata (3.29.14) lists five kinds of
liberation that are such experiences: sharing the
same place with the Lord (sālokya), having the
same rank as the Lord (sārṣṭi), being present in the
vicinity of the Lord (sāmī pya), having identical
appearance (sārupya), and having unity (ekatva)
with him. With Madhva and his followers, bliss
was not only an essential characteristic of libera-
tion, but a matter of gradation as well: the liber-
ated Selves were not equally blissful ([30],
pp. 176–179). The Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas have like-
wise developed a soteriological hierarchy through
a classification of the relationships that the liber-
ated Self experiences with Kṛṣṇa, based on the
aesthetic of emotions of classical Sanskrit poetics
[12]. Bhakti or devotion to Kṛṣṇa had also become
a contender for the post of the highest good,
subsuming liberation but denying its independent
value: in fact, the above referenced verse from the
Bhāgavata says that the devotees do not accept
the five kinds of liberation, even if they are freely
given, if their experience involves the loss of
service to the Lord. Important debates arose
within the traditions about soteriological causality
and the relative role of personal effort and divine
grace [22]. Jī van-mukti was officially not
accepted, but there certainly was some sense to
being liberated while still living [31].
The traditions of Śaivism were divided into
dualistic and monistic ontologies. In the first, the
Self was eternally distinct from Śiva, and libera-
tion was commonly understood as becoming
identical to Śiva: not one with him, but a Śiva in
kind. There were, it seems, many ideas as to how
16 Moksa
˙

one obtains Śiva’s characteristics in liberation. In ▶ Karma

the Śaiva Siddhānta, which was originally a ▶ Kaśmir Śaivism
pan-Indian Sanskrit tradition but was eventually ▶ Kriya Yoga
restricted to the south and incorporated the devo- ▶ Madhva
tion (bhakti) of the Tamil Śaiva saints, the Self had ▶ Mahāvākya
Śiva’s characteristics innately, and in liberation ▶ Mantra
they were just manifested. The Pāśupatas, as we ▶ Meditation (Hinduism)
saw in the section on “Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika,” claimed ▶ Nyāya (and Navya-Nyāya)
that the characteristics of Śiva that the Self has in ▶ Pāśupata
liberation were not innate – the Self was essen- ▶ Prakṛti
tially non-sentient – but received or “transferred” ▶ Prāṇāyāma
from Śiva to the liberated Self [39]. The ▶ Prapatti
pratyabhijñā school of Kashmir Śaivism, on the ▶ Pratyabhijñā
other hand, was monistic: the individual Self was ▶ Puruṣa
a manifestation of Śiva, who is consciousness in ▶ Puruṣārtha
nature, and liberation was just merging one’s indi- ▶ ṚgVeda
vidual consciousness back into the Supreme ([9], ▶ Śaiva Siddhānta
pp. 166–168). ▶ Śaivism, Overview
▶ Samādhi
▶ Sāṁkhya
▶ Saṁsāra
Cross-References
▶ Śaṅkara (Śaṁkara)
▶ Śiva
▶ Advaita Vedānta
▶ Soma
▶ Aesthetics (Hinduism)
▶ Svarga
▶ Amṛta
▶ Upaniṣads
▶ Ānanda
▶ Vācaspati Miśra
▶ Anubhava
▶ Vaikuṇṭha
▶ Anumāna
▶ Vaiśeṣika
▶ Ātman, Hinduism
▶ Vaiṣṇavism, Overview
▶ Aum
▶ Vedānta, Overview
▶ Avidyā
▶ Vedas, Overview
▶ Bhagavad Gītā
▶ Vedic Ritual
▶ Bhāgavata Purāṇa
▶ Yoga, Overview
▶ Bhakti
▶ Yogasūtra of Patañjali
▶ Bhāskara
▶ Brahma Sūtras (Vedānta Sūtras)
▶ Brahman
▶ Brāhmaṇas References
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