[Buddha-l] Samkhya

Joy Vriens joy at vrienstrad.com
Wed Jul 4 23:13:14 MDT 2007


It has been for a while I haven't made any sweeping statements, so it seems to me, and therefore my mental hygiene requires I make one. It struck me reading the Samkhya Karikas and our friend Dan's interesting article http://www.acmuller.net/yogacara/schools/samkhya-uni.htm that I couldn't think of any Indian philosophy that hasn't been influenced by the Samkhyan doctrine. I can't think of a single school that hasn't attacked Samkhya whilst plagiarizing or creatively using it. "Cutting out the middle man" Girard would have said. Yoga is applied Samkhya, Buddhism is recycled Samkhya with real bits of yoga in it, Yogacara is Samkhya under a different name. Nagarjuna's absolute and relative truth? Purusa and Prakrti! Also known as the Dharmakaya and the informal kayas, Samsara and Nirvana, Siva and sakti (and thereby including high tantric Buddhism), Brahma and maya etc. And of course every monism is a closet Samkhyan dualism. Basically Samhkya can be reduced to an absolute mod!
 e (A), a relative mode (B) and a theory and practice about their relationship and how to access the absolute (yoga) (C). Generally the absolute can be accessed through intelligence (buddhi) or love and intelligence and love can be variously defined. Have I missed anything in Indian philosophy? :-)
So can Buddhism be properly understood and taught without Samkhya? Why isn't there a hommage in Buddhist texts addressed to Kapila? Who did the Buddha assassinate in Oedipal  
or fashion or through silence?
Joy   



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