Critique of Indic Darshana-s
Yes — any explanation of pฤramฤrthika and vyฤvahฤrika inevitably admits the existence of two distinct states.
So Advaita is not, as it is popularly understood, the assertion of absolute non-duality.
It presumes a duality of operation — a higher and a lower plane — and on that very premise all its later conclusions are built. Like every other philosophy, Advaita too has its foundational flaw: the presumption itself.
Sฤแน
khya falters in its division of prakแนti and puruแนฃa.
If in samฤdhi the puruแนฃa remains calm and supreme, how and why does prakแนti manage to drag the mind back into the mundane world?
And truly, no one can remain in samฤdhi for long — except in death.
Yoga errs in the opposite direction — in its attempt to over-discipline the mind into a single-pointed fixation.
Its claims of miraculous siddhis arising merely from concentration border on the absurd.
Vaiลeแนฃika is a mathematical obsession with categories and numbers — an intellectual taxonomy without soul.
Naiyฤyika logic, derived from Vaiลeแนฃika, remains trapped in the mechanics of deduction.
But deduction alone never reveals truth; some spark of intuition, some eureka — the anubhava — is always necessary.
Mฤซmฤแนsฤ is a valiant but futile effort to justify obsolete ritualism through intricate theories of karma. If karma truly ensures cosmic justice, why then do we require human courts and punishment?
Tattvavฤda of Madhva leans heavily upon theology, bordering on monotheism. It cannot explain why the lover should wish to remain eternally separate from the Beloved. It rests too much on Purฤแนic authority, favouring Viแนฃแนu and Kแนแนฃแนa while overlooking that other Purฤแนas glorify ลiva and Devฤซ in equal measure. Indeed, Viแนฃแนu is scarcely prominent in the Vedas — Indra, Agni, and Soma shine far more vividly there.
ลaแน kara’s Advaita, as mentioned, fails to explain how the One became many if the One alone is real. If all multiplicity is an illusion, to whom does that illusion appear? And can illusion truly be identical with the perceiver? When questioned on divine justice, Advaita (like most Indic systems) invokes the doctrine of karma — God does not intervene; the pฤpa and puแนya of jฤซvas play themselves out.
But I have deep reservations about such passive karma-theory — its moral inertia, its easy abdication of responsibility.
Buddhism, in its idealist and often solipsistic turn, leaves the same gap — if all existence is suffering and cyclic, what sustains the cycle?
Jainism relies on the cleverness of its syฤdvฤda, its fourfold logic —
but how can anything simultaneously exist and not exist, be true and untrue, both and neither, if truth is to mean anything at all?
And Cฤrvฤka, the loud rebel, is mere materialism — a faith in matter masquerading as realism.
It proclaims no profound siddhฤnta, only the obvious: that what is seen is real, and what is unseen is not. That too, perhaps, is its illusion.
