compare and contrast of Samkhya Yoga and Shankara's Advaita Yoga
I would like to take this opportunity to compare and contrast Samkhya Yoga and Shankara's Advaita Vedanta. While discussing some concepts from each in class, I realized that I did not have a critical and delineated understanding of each philosophic system. considering that Samkhya is more than 2500 years old, while Shankara lived 1200 years ago. Inherently these were systems of thought that flourished in very different cultural milieu.
The axiomatic model of cosmology is radically different in Samkhya Yoga and Advaita Vedanta. Samkhya fundamentally defines reality with dualism: purusha/prakrti, yama/niyama, active/passive. And attempts to understand samsara and halt it through categorical research and discourse. Samkhya defines three valid modes of thinking, or pramanas: anumana (logical inference), pratyaksha (sensory evidence), sabda (authority of others). With valid thinking, each of us are capable of attaining moksha for ourselves.
But to Shankara, humans are subject to a world of illusion and constant gross misapprehension of what is real. And while philosophizing may serve it's purposes, it alone cannot lead to moksha. I believe this was a major highlight in Indian polemic history which was part of a larger trend of making this tradition of religious considerations more accessible. In this sense, Advaita categorizes three states of truth: Paramarthika (only Brahman is true), Vyavaharika (the pragmatic world in which jiva are real and the material world is not), Pratibasika (where the apparent/material world is true).
The axiomatic model of cosmology is radically different in Samkhya Yoga and Advaita Vedanta. Samkhya fundamentally defines reality with dualism: purusha/prakrti, yama/niyama, active/passive. And attempts to understand samsara and halt it through categorical research and discourse. Samkhya defines three valid modes of thinking, or pramanas: anumana (logical inference), pratyaksha (sensory evidence), sabda (authority of others). With valid thinking, each of us are capable of attaining moksha for ourselves.
But to Shankara, humans are subject to a world of illusion and constant gross misapprehension of what is real. And while philosophizing may serve it's purposes, it alone cannot lead to moksha. I believe this was a major highlight in Indian polemic history which was part of a larger trend of making this tradition of religious considerations more accessible. In this sense, Advaita categorizes three states of truth: Paramarthika (only Brahman is true), Vyavaharika (the pragmatic world in which jiva are real and the material world is not), Pratibasika (where the apparent/material world is true).