Page Text
________________
THE FOUR AIMS OF LIFE to the revelation, preservation, and experience of the one great divinely-intended image. Dharma is the doctrine of the duties and rights of cach in the ideal society, and as such the law or mirror of all moral action.
4. Mokşa, apavarga, niruştli, or nivịtti, the fourth of the Four Aims, is redemption, or spiritual release. This is regarded as the ultimate aim, the final human good, and as such is set over and against the former three.
Artha, Kāma, and Dharma, known as the trivarga, the "group of three,” are the pursuits of the world; each implies its own orientation or "life philosophy," and to each a special literature is dedicated. But by far the greatest measure of Indian thought, research, teaching, and writing has been concerned with the supreme spiritual theme of liberation from ignorance and from the passions of the world's general illusion. Mokşa, from the root muc, “to loose, set frce, let go, release, liberate, deliver; to leave, abandon, quit," means “liberation, escape, freedom, release; rescue, deliverance; final emancipation of the soul." A pavarga, from the verb apavrj, "to avert, destroy, dissipate; tear off, pull out, take out,” means “throwing, discharging (a missile), abandonment; completion, end; and the fulfillment, or accomplishment of an action." Nirurtti is “disappearance, destruction, rest, tranquility, completion, accomplishment, liberation from worldly existence, satisfaction, happiness, bliss"; and nivytti: "cessation, termination, disappearance; abstinence from activity or work; leaving off, desisting from, resignation; discontinuance of worldly acts or emotions; quietism, separation from the world; rest, repose, felicity." All of which dictionary terms taken together suggest something of the highest end of man as conceived by the Indian sage.
India's paramārtha--"paramount (parama) object (artha)"-is nothing less than the basic reality which underlies the phenomenal realm. This is apprehended when the mere impressions conveyed by the physical senses to a nervous brain in the service
41
| 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 |