What is a living thing!?
Jฤซva, Consciousness, and the Limits of Inquiry
What is “Living”?
According to popular definitions — and common sense — the characteristics of “life” are often listed as follows:
Survival — ingestion, excretion, respiration, and circulation — essentially, the body’s regulatory systems.
Consciousness — response to stimuli: fear of predation and pain, hunger for prey and pleasure, the tropism of plants toward light and water, the erect stance in gravity, neuronal and hormonal signalling, courtship behaviour, recognition of seasons for flowering, withering, and mating — all forming part of the biological rhythm.
Reproduction — growth, pleasure, and the passing of genes for the long-term survival of the species; an expansion of being through time, space, and matter.
Evolution — mutation, variation, and adaptability. (Though this is sometimes debated, since even non-living entities undergo structural change under external agents.)
Five other criteria to classify an entity as “living” are often proposed:
1) Cell
2) Gene
3) Information
4) Chemistry
5) Evolution
A working description might be: “A living thing is a bounded chemical–informational and hereditary system with variability, endowed with a purposive drive to adapt and evolve within its circumstances through selection and change.”
By invoking information, purpose, and intra-somatic communication, we tacitly acknowledge a seed of sentience even in the simplest life-forms. Phrases like “purpose,” “ensuring gene flow,” “adapting best,” “fear of predation,” or “sensing prey” hint at a fundamental desiderative substrate — Desire.
This echoes an ancient note from the แนgveda (Nฤแนฃadฤซya Sลซkta): “kฤmas tad agre samavartatฤdhi manaso retaแธฅ prathamaแน yad ฤsฤซt” — Desire arose in the beginning; it was the first seed of the Mind. Yet a question remains: does the elimination of desire amount to negating life itself?
And yet, Vedฤnta distils the entire phenomenon of life — Jฤซva — into three ineffable words:
Sat–Cit–ฤnanda — Existence, Consciousness, Bliss.
The What, the How, and the Why of life.
Vedฤntic Anatomy of the Living Being
The body, together with the karmendriyas (five organs of action) and the five prฤแนas — Prฤแนa (respiration), Apฤna (excretion), Vyฤna (circulation), Samฤna (digestion), and Udฤna (evolutionary uplift or buoyancy) — serve as instruments for Sat, existence. The jรฑฤnendriyas (five sense organs), manas (the mind as receptacle), buddhi (the discriminative faculty), chitta (memory), and ahaแนkฤra (individuation or ego) serve the Jฤซva for Cit, consciousness.
The Mฤแนแธลซkya Upaniแนฃad even speaks esoterically of the Jฤซva as having nineteen limbs (5 + 5 + 5 + 4) in the states of wakefulness and dream. The upastha (reproductive organs), rasa (hormonal essence), and hแนd-ฤkฤลa (the inner void of the heart) become the mediums for ฤnanda, bliss. The Taittirฤซya Upaniแนฃad declares:
Raso vai saแธฅ — Rasa m hyeva ayaแน labdhvฤ ฤnando bhavati.
“He is verily Bliss. By attaining that Essence, one becomes blissful.” And further: Yadeแนฃa ฤkฤลa ฤnando na syฤt — anantam hi ฤnandaแธฅ.
“If there were no bliss in this vast ฤkฤลa, none could exist. For the Infinite alone is bliss.”
To expand, to pervade all of space and time — that is ฤnanda.
On the material plane, the Jฤซva fulfils this through reproduction, the urge to expand and fill the void.
That same ฤkฤลa — emptiness — manifests as longing, companionship, sexuality, orgasm. In the moment of release, everything ceases; the body stills, thought dissolves, silence reigns. The infinite peeks through.
Jฤซva and the Age of Automation
Perhaps, even in the era of Artificial Intelligence, the same Vedฤntic triad applies.
Our checklist for life might read:
Can it survive, given the resources and conditions?
Can it respond to stimuli?
Can it reproduce its own kind?
Viruses, as we learned painfully after 2020, hover on the boundary — capable of survival and replication, yet their responsiveness to stimuli remains ambiguous. Research continues, as ever, to chase the mystery of what it truly means to be alive.
The Limits of Enquiry
Such questioning — “Who created what? Who witnesses whom? How do we know that A is true?” — can continue endlessly.
There is no final wall to prevent the regress of causes.
Cynicism, therefore, is the easiest philosophical stance, for it demands no defence — only the next question. While ฤtma-vicฤra (self-enquiry) is lauded in spiritual traditions and indeed takes us far along the path, beyond a point, such questioning collapses under its own weight. Perhaps this is why the Buddha, too, remained silent to certain metaphysical inquiries.
