A Sublime Thought

He was a learned man, my teacher, Subramaniam Sir.

The other day, I knocked at his door,

Invited in, I found him immersed in a brown-cased bound book,

The 1862 edition of Richard Gorbe’s treatise

On Aniruddha’s commentary on the Samkhya Sutras;

Samkhya philosophy predates Buddhism.

In these two major systems,

“Knowledge and meditation took the place of religious rites.”

My teacher had once explained that,

Knowledge is to know the thing that exists, its make-up, material and

Behaviour,

Meditation is to understand the true nature of its existence.

These two efforts, in a way, eliminate the notion of God our creator, of soul,

Its bondage and liberation.

Gaudapada, who lived very long ago and was the grand preceptor of Adi

Sankara concluded that the act (of creation extras)

Cannot exist simultaneously with the cause (or reason),

The former cannot give rise to reason, because there must be some cause

That gives rise to reason, therefore, non-origination is the truth.

We are led to the undeniable premise that,

Nothing is produced or comes out of itself or from another,

Nothing is originated

Existence is beginningless,

That which has no beginning can have no origination.