Page Text
________________
THE HINDRANCES
1. Avidya: nescience, ignorance, not-knowing-better; unawareness of the truth that transcends the perceptions of the mind and senses in their normal functioning. As a consequence of this impairment we are bound by the prejudices and habits of naïve consciousness. Avidyā is the root of all our so-called conscious thought.
2. Asmita (asmi "I am"): the sensation, and crude notion, "I am I; cogito ergo sum; this obvious ego, supporting my experience, is the real essence and foundation of my being."
3. Rāja: attachment, sympathy, interest; affection of every kind.
4. Dueșa: the feeling contrary to rāja: disinclination, distaste, dislike, repugnance, and hatred.
Rāja and dveṣa, sympathy and antipathy, are at the root of all the pairs of opposites (dvandva) in the sphere of human emotions, reactions, and opinion. They tear the soul unremittingly this way and that, upsetting its balance and agitating the lakelike, mirrorlike surface, thus rendering it incapable of reflecting without distortion the perfect image of purușa.
5. Abhiniveśa: clinging to life as to a process that should go on without end; i.e., the will to live.
These five hindrances, or impairments, are to be regarded as so many perversions, troubling consciousness and concealing the essential state of serenity of our true nature. They are generated involuntarily and continuously, welling in an uninterrupted effluence from the hidden source of our phenomenal existence. They give strength to the substance of ego, and ceaselessly build up its illusory frame.
The source of all this confusion is the natural interplay of the guņas, those three "constituents, powers, or qualities" of prakṛti at which we glanced in our study of the leśyas of the Jainas; namely, sattva, rajas, and tamas.
1. Sattva is a noun built on the participle sat (or sant), from 17 Supra, pp. 229-281.
295
17
| SR No. | 007309 |
| Book Title | Philosophies of India |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell |
| Publisher | Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd |
| Publication Year | 1953 |
| Total Pages | 709 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 34 MB |