MANDUKYA UPANISHAD with GAUDAPADA’S KARIKA: 37 - Swami Advayananda.

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Sunday 03, November 2024, 06:10.
MANDUKYA UPANISHAD 
GAUDAPADA’S KARIKA
Agama Prakarana – “The Scriptural Treatise”

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GAUDAPADA’S KARIKA:  PART 4/4:   ALAATA-SHANTI PRAKARANA (100 mantras): Quenching the Firebrand:
The SANKHYANS Refuted:
Karika Section 4.3:   
Mantras - 14-23 (10 No.) 
Mantram - 4.22: The Summary Statement 
Post-37.

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Mantram - 4.22: The Summary Statement 

1. 

Svatah vaa paratah vaa api, = Either from itself or from another or from both, 

2.  

na kinchit vastu jaayate; = nothing at all is ever born. 

3.

sat asat sat asat vaa api, = Whether it be being or non-being or both, 

4. 

na kinchit vastu jaayate. = nothing at all is ever born.

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Six logical possibilities of origination of Creation are presented here, and all six of 

them are denied in this verse. The conclusion is that creation is illusory – it can never take 

place in reality. Let us at first examine each of these six possibilities, before seeing why they 

are negated. The first three consider Sat, a real thing, as the cause or effect: 

i) Sat Swatah: Nothing is born out of itself. I am not born out of myself. 

ii) Sat Paratah: A thing cannot be born of another thing which is other than itself. A 

chair cannot be produced from water. 

iii) Sat Swatah-Paratah: A thing cannot also be born of ‘itself-and-another’. A jar and 

a piece of cloth cannot produce either another jar and/or piece of cloth.

 

In all three cases, what we are really seeing logically is that a real thing that is 

existing does not need to be produced because it is already there, and will never not be 

there. There is no need for a cause to produce it. Subsequently, no effect can be produced 

from such a real thing, which, being beginningless, is also deathless. If anything were to be 

produced by it, then it would have to be identical to it, and simple logic rules out the 

possibility of it being produced as it is already there! 

The other three cases to be considered are of Asat, a non-existing thing, in place of 

Sat as being the cause and effect:

iv) Asat Swatah: Asat cannot produce itself, i.e. another non-existent thing. This 

becomes a meaningless statement. A mirage cannot produce another mirage. 

v) Asat Paratah: Asat cannot produce anything else. A mirage cannot produce water. 

This also is absurd.  

vi) Asat Swatah-Paratah: Asat cannot produce anything that is Sat-and-Asat. Contra

dictory ideas like this cannot exist together in the same thing. 

These latter three cases are in fact asserted by a school of thought called the 

Kshanika Vijnana Vadins (a Buddhistic school). They view all external objects as a thought in 

the mind. [In this first part, they do not differ from the Vedantic school called Drishti-Srishti 

Vada.] However, the second aspect of their theory is that these ideas or thoughts are 

changing from moment to moment. As each idea is ‘born’, it immediately ‘dies’. This they 

interpret as “the co-existence of existence and non-existence”! 

This philosophy does not stand the scrutiny of reason, and is very hard to even 

imagine. And if all the logical aspects are scrutinized, it does not hold water. The foremost 

contradiction it sets up is the impossibility of having any memory of such an occurrence.  

*****

Next

Mantram - 4.23: Cause & Effect are Birthless  

Continued

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