The Philosophy of the Brahma-sutra by Aleksandar Uskokov;

Author:Aleksandar Uskokov;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350150034
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK (Minor Textbooks)
Published: 2022-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

The Soul as Agent

It is apposite here before we continue with karma to pay one debt to Chapter 3 and briefly discuss Bādarāyaṇa’s heading on the soul’s characteristic of agency.21 The background is again that of Sāṅkhya, where the soul is said to be an agent of experience, specifically of karma, but not of action. The underlying Sāṅkhya concern is soteriological—an essentially active soul could never become free of karma—but there is a soteriological price to pay as well. If the soul is not an agent, then it cannot exercise free will. How can, then, it ever become liberated? The Sāṅkhya reply is given in Sāṅkhya-kārikā 62: the soul does not become liberated, because it was never bound to begin with. It is only prime matter that binds and liberates itself. Even the soul’s agency of experience is agency just “in a manner of speaking,” because the soul is in mere proximity and not true union with prime matter.

The Sāṅkhya argument is bolstered by strong references, adduced by the commentators in presenting the prima facie view, from no less authoritative source than the Bhagavad-gītā, which says that it is the modes or guṇas of prime matter that act, whereas the soul is merely the enjoyer of happiness and suffering, that is, of karma.22

There is again a major disagreement in the interpretation of the adhikaraṇa, and Śaṅkara and Bhāskara implicitly endorse the Sāṅkhya view, making the entire adhikaraṇa a prima facie view as it were. Their interpretation can be right only if their understanding of embodiment and liberation are shared by Bādarāyaṇa. We have seen how they are on their own with respect to the first, and in Chapter 7 a similar story will emerge with respect to the second. We side, therefore, with Nimbārka and Rāmānuja.

Bādarāyaṇa’s argument about the soul’s agency is theological, and its core is that for scriptural injunctions to make sense, the soul must be the agent, and the agent of action and experience must be identical.23 This is based on a principle stated in Mīmāṁsā-sūtra: “The result of undertaking scripturally enjoined action belongs to the undertaker.”24 In Bādarāyaṇa’s context, the principle specifically pertains to the attainment of samādhi or meditative absorption in which the vision of Brahman, whereupon liberation is consequent, obtains. If the soul has no agency in the meditative act, then it would not be entitled to the results of samādhi either.25

As we have seen earlier, the soul is not the only agent, and Bādarāyaṇa again affirms Brahman’s crucial role: “[The agency of the soul], however, [comes] from the Supreme, because there are scriptural texts [to this effect].”26 The texts identified by the commentators are those which we have seen in the case of Brahman’s causative agency in the experience of karma, and similar dependence is stated here as well: not only does Brahman depend on karma in the domain of experience, but he also depends on the effort of the soul as the primary agent with respect to action, for otherwise injunctions and prohibitions would be useless.

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