# Eastern Philosophy  ## Metadata - Author: [[Oliver Leaman]] - Full Title: Eastern Philosophy - Category: #books ## Highlights - The man whose heart never cherishes even the thought of injury to any one, who rejoices at the prosperity of even his greatest enemy, that man is the Bhakta, he is the Yogi, he is the Guru of all, even though he lives every day of his life on the flesh of swine. ([Location 462](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=462)) - But the word “I” is quite different from other nouns and pronouns. It can never refer to anyone but the subject. It is actually a shortcut term which refers to a complicated system of interlocking forces, which can be identified and separated, but which we should not identify with. ([Location 554](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=554)) - Perfection or freedom from human misery is achieved only by acting in a detached manner. ([Location 806](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=806)) - Immortal and free, he can continue his human action from that highest level and transmute it into a supreme and all-embracing divine activity, —that indeed is the ultimate crown and significance here of all works and living and sacrifice and the world’s endeavour. ([Location 855](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=855)) - Although the reasoning faculty functions acutely and clearly, it would be wrong to understand dhyana merely as a logical-rational process: The contemplator must penetrate his object with all his heart, since he is after all primarily interested in a spiritual experience which is to lead him to ontic participation and the emancipation from all constricting and binding hindrances.’ ([Location 2134](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=2134)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - The nature of man is such that he craves for eternal or permanent happiness. But the things from which he hopes to derive such happiness are themselves impermanent. Happiness or satisfaction derived from impermanent or ephemeral things would surely be temporary and therefore fall short of his expectation, that is, permanent happiness. Hence his suffering. ([Location 2155](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=2155)) - The prescribed expedient for the removal of the correlation condition is viveka-khyati, the ‘vision of discernment’, a high-level enstasy which eliminates all one’s false identities not by way of mere intellectual acrobatics but in a process of clarification and purification of consciousness. ([Location 2163](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=2163)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - social harmony can only be attained through personal self-cultivation. ([Location 2195](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=2195)) - but this ‘Lord’, isvara, is not at all what we would call God. Like all other souls he is eternal, but he is not the creator and sustainer of the universe, nor anything like it. He is simply the only soul that never comes into contact with matter and who is thereby able to help other souls out of their bondage to the body. ([Location 2922](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=2922)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - It is worth noting at this point that the Sankhya-Yoga view thereby avoids one of the most serious pitfalls of Cartesian dualism, since on the Indian account, mental causation does not violate physical conservation laws. By including the mind in the realm of matter, mental events are granted causal efficacy, and are therefore able to directly initiate bodily motions. ([Location 2977](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=2977)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - all such relations involve some element of reciprocal obligation. “The humane man, desiring to establish himself, seeks to establish others; desiring himself to succeed, he helps others to succeed. To judge others by what one knows of oneself is the method of achieving humanity” (6:28). ([Location 3210](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=3210)) - In the world everyone knows enough to pursue what he does not know, but no one knows enough to pursue what he already knows. ([Location 3549](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=3549)) - Yet, he is separated from Buddhahood only by one single small obstacle, i.e. his belief in a personal self, his assumption that he is a separate individual, his inveterate tendency towards “I-making and Mine-making” (ahamkaramamakara). ([Location 3871](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=3871)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - central problem for the Indian philosophical reflection, therefore, has been that of error and not of evil as has been the case in the western tradition. ([Location 4122](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=4122)) - So, in sharp contrast to the western approach, the mind and the cognitive activities it sustains are held to be intrinsically unconscious, since manas, buddhi and ahamkara are all manifestations of prakrti. ([Location 4484](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=4484)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Liberation is achieved in realizing the pure puruna as distinct from the complex of psycho-mental experiences which forms the notion of the ego and which resulted from the confusion of puruna with prakrti. ([Location 4502](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=4502)) - If a person reaches this state he becomes jivan-mukta, i.e. liberated while alive. Realizing the oneness of all, his life becomes one of unselfish service. At death his freedom from bondage is complete. Casting off the physical body, the soul becomes completely free. ([Location 4538](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=4538)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - For emancipation from the bondage of one’s body, what is needed is the knowledge of the distinction between the purusha and the prakriti, the self and non-self The self tends to confuse itself with buddhi, the intellect. When the knowledge of the distinction is achieved, the soul is no longer bound by the prakriti. The person becomes a disinterested spectator of the happenings in the world. At death the bond between the purusha and the prakriti is completely dissolved and the emancipated soul, unlike other souls is free from rebirth. Bondage, according to this philosophy, is due to ignorance, and emancipation comes through knowledge. ([Location 4597](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=4597)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - There is, of course, a fundamental difference between Jung and the Sankhya-Yoga since, in Jung’s sense of the word, the ‘self’ is seen indeed as the immortal centre of the human personality, but the aim of his psychological method is not only to bring the self to light and enable it to displace the ego as the directing principle of the total psyche, but also to harmonize the rest of the psyche around this new centre, whereas the aim of the Sankhya-Yoga is to divorce for ever the immortal self from all purely spatiotemporal elements in the psyche. Jung sees the process as ‘individuation’ or ‘integration of the personality’: the SankhyaYogin sees it as the ‘isolation’ of the ‘person’ —for that is what puruna means—from the psychophysical envelope which surrounds him. ([Location 4621](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=4621)) - When you are doing any work, do not think of anything beyond. Do it as worship, as the highest worship, and devote your whole life to it for the time being. Thus, in the story, the Vyadha and the woman did their duty with cheerfulness and wholeheartedness; and the result was that they became illuminated; clearly showing that the right performance of the duties of any station in life, without attachment to results, leads us to the highest realisation of the perfection of the soul. ([Location 5007](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=5007)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Its sole aim is to teach the way of reaching the state of equanimity, in which the saint has no preferences, likes and dislikes—where the difference between the sinner and the virtuous, the self and the not-self has vanished. The idea of yoga as self-surrendering union with God and self-surrendering performance of one’s duties is the special feature which is absent in Buddhism. ([Location 5051](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=5051)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - It seems to have been the combination of a rational and reverent inquiry on the one hand and the experiences of Yoga on the other that led to the ultimate conclusion, which is undoubtedly the purport of a majority of Upanishadic texts, that the eternal element in the human soul at its deepest level is identical with the ground and origin of the universe. God is man; and man is God, and between the two, as they are in their essence and when stripped of all that is accidental, there is no difference at all. This is the basic conclusion of the Vedanta philosophy in its extreme nondualist form as interpreted by Sankara in the ninth century A.D.; and this absolute monism is regarded by many in India as being the bald statement of absolute truth. It is as foreign to the Judaic conception of deity as it is possible to be. ([Location 5089](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=5089)) - So also one may say that the perfection of the integral Yoga will come when each man is able to follow his own path of Yoga, pursuing the development of his own nature in its upsurging towards that which transcends the nature. For freedom is the final law and the last consummation. ([Location 5120](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=5120)) - But in proportion as this contact establishes itself, the Sadhaka must become conscious that a force other than his own, a force transcending his egoistic endeavour and capacity, is at work in him and to this Power he learns progressively to submit himself and delivers up to it the charge of his Yoga. In the end his own will and force become one with the higher Power; he merges them in the divine Will and its transcendent and universal Force. He finds it thenceforward presiding over the necessary transformation of his mental, vital and physical being with an impartial wisdom and provident effectivity of which the eager and interested ego is not capable. It is when this identification and this self-merging are complete that the divine centre in the world is ready. Purified, liberated, plastic, illumined, it can begin to serve as a means for the direct action of a supreme Power in the larger Yoga of humanity or superhumanity, of the earth’s spiritual progression or its transformation. ([Location 5129](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=5129)) - Similarly, compared with a person in the highest state of yogic concentration, worldly people are slumbering in ignorance. So long as they remain in this state of ignorance they do not realize that the world of sense experience does not exist in reality. Highest knowledge yields the realization that reality is pure and undiscriminated consciousness.This, of course, leads Vasubandhu to deny not only the validity and possibility of sense perception, but also of extrasensory perception. For example, in telepathy one is said to perceive the nature and functioning of another’s mind (para-citta). If this is possible, here again there will be dichotomy of subject (i.e., one’s own mind, sva-citta) and object (i.e., another’s mind, para-citta), and this dichotomy is false. This is absolute Idealism. And like Nagârjuna,Vasubandhu, with the intention of justifying the Mahayana doctrine of ‘one vehicle’ (eka-yana), insisted that this highest knowledge is attained with the realization of Buddhahood. ([Location 5153](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00BMTUWTM&location=5153))