Comments | kaivalya0: compare and contrast of Samkhya Yoga and Shankara's Advaita Yoga

kaivalya0

compare and contrast of Samkhya Yoga and Shankara's Advaita Yoga

May 05, 2006 20:54

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. ( Read more... )

Comments 5

roykay May 8 2006, 03:47:37 UTC

>Samkhya fundamentally defines reality with dualism: purusha/prakrti, yama/niyama, active/passive.

This got me wondering. About 2200-2700 years ago "dualisms" emerged in Iran (Zorastrianism) and China (Taoism). Is there any indication of a common strain from the Transoxus or Tarim Basin. Alternatively was there substantial cross fertilization?

jmoebius May 8 2006, 04:29:33 UTC

My inclination is that only linguistics could really get at that question.

However philosophically speaking, while Samkhyaa uses a dualist constructions, it's very different than say Taoism. Taoism acknowledges the duality as a means of harmonizing it, where the ultimate goal in Samkhya is to divide the mind from matter, not to get them to work together. I guess in this sense, it's mroe like gnosticism.

I believe that finding polarity is a basic function of our "reptilian brain" and can be found as a seemingly sychronistic phenomenon through out human thinking. Buddhism discribes our coming to being as the false belief that "you" is different than "I". In this sense, Buddhism acknowledges polarity, but seeks to abolish it since it is non-truth.

So I guess what I'm saying is, philosophically, it's one thing to acknowledge polarity, what you do with that polarity is different.

jmoebius May 8 2006, 16:48:02 UTC

Something linguistic I just ran across...

In sanskrit, particularly in the peroid 500 years before Siddartha Buddha (1000 BCE - 500 BCE), the term "asura" (lightly aspirated 's') frequently arises. Asuras are demonic creatures existing solely against the devas (gods).

In Zoroastrianism you can find the term "ahura" or "Aesir" used to refer to a "supreme person". And Zoroastrianism is critical of the daewas (like devas) for their treatment of sacrifical cows. Where early sanskrit mythology depicts the asura fighting eachother through gruesome sacrifices.

So this is a place where you can see the linguistic similarities, but in many ways it seems to be inversed in meaning. Likely to happen as multiple cultures mingle and attempt to explain eachother and themselves.

jmoebius May 8 2006, 16:48:59 UTC

Where ahura is the etymology of aesir.

roykay May 9 2006, 02:37:38 UTC

"Aesirianism" is also interesting - relating commonalities in Germanic, Greco-Roman (Olympian), and Zorastrian (more likely pre-Zorastrian) pantheons. Also related, conceptually, even to "Tangri" of the Hunno-Mongols. One would likely expect the same of the Scythians and Yueh-Chi. Yah-Weh may have originated as a mountain god as well ( ... )