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BHAGAVAD GITA
The seductresses had consumed many merchants before, who, like those of the present party, had been washed onto their beaches. At once alluring and devouring, they represent in the Buddhist allegory the enticing, destructive character of the sensual world. But over the island of these seductresses, the isle of the life of man's involvement in the world, the figure of “Cloud" (valähaka), the savior, is wont to appear, from time to time, soaring through the sky. And he calls out: Ko pāraga: "Who is going to the other shore?” which is a familiar cry in India; for it is the cry of the ferryman when his boat puts in. The ferryman shouts it loudly, so that any travelers tarrying in the village may know that they must hurry; and the voice of Cloud rings loudly too. When the merchants hear it, those who can bring themselves to forsake the perilous plcasures of the island immediately mount the winged steed, and they are transported to the "other shore" of peace. But all who remain meet in time a terrible death. Morcover those, once mounted on the gigantic flying savior, who turn to look back for a last, fond view, inadvertently fall to a sorry death in the pitiless sea below.
The inhabitant of the perishable body-the indestructible life-monad (puruṣa), which according to the Sārkhya doctrine was to be regarded as the core and life-seed of each living individual-according to the composite system of the Bhagavad Gitā is but a particle of the one supreme Divine Being, with which it is in essence identical. Thus, with one bold stroke, the transcendental monism of the Vedic Brāhman doctrine of the Self is reconciled with the pluralistic life-monad doctrine of the dualistic, atheistic Sānkhya; and so the two teachings now are understood in India as descriptions from two points of view of the same reality. The nondual Atmavāda presents the higher truth, whereas the Sankhya is an empirical analysis of the logical principles of the lower, rational sphere of the pairs-of-opposites (dvandva). In the latter, antagonistic principles are in force, and these constitute the basis, or termini, of all normal human ex
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