Book Title: Philosophies of India
Author(s): Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd

View full book text
Previous | Next

Page 624
________________ ALL THE GODS WITHIN US are riches, boons, and wondrous paradoxical insights that She holds in store only for those who truly dote on Her, and which the haughty discriminators, dedicated to the transcendental One-without-a-second, can never share. Throughout the known history of India these two points of view have operated in a dialectic process of antagonistic cooperation to bring to pass the majestic evolution of art, philosophy, ritual and religion, political, social, economic, and literary forms, which we know today as the miracle of Indian civilization. By and large, it can be said that the nondual world-affirmation of the Vedic Brāhmans, with its wider swing and greater depth, has been the dominant and victorious contributor to the development. To the pluralistic-realistic, idealistic dualism of Jaina-Sānkhya stamp we can ascribe only a preliminary and provocative role. By virtue of a bold and vigorous technique of philosophizing in paradoxes, continually establishing the essential unity of terms and spheres that would logically appear to be antagonistic, the fertile thought of Brāhmanism unfailingly brought together, fused, and transcended the pairs-of-opposites, which were then allowed to proceed again from each other in a brilliant dialectical play; Brāhmanic thought being the philosophic counterpart and expression of the life-process itself, a reflection in conceptual terms of the paradoxology of life's unceasing dynamism. Food, flesh, and blood become transformed in a living body into impulses, emotions, feelings, thought, and inspiration. These in turn condition and move the bodily frame. Then the decomposition of the same body after death converts it into the teeming life of worms and vegetation, which again is food. There is a continuous circuit of metabolism, an unending transformation of opposites into each other. And this reality of becoming is what is mirrored in the Brāhmanic monist conception of māyā. The perpetual motion of things turning into each other is the reality denoted by the icon of the Goddess. The 599

Loading...

Page Navigation
1 ... 622 623 624 625 626 627 628 629 630 631 632 633 634 635 636 637 638 639 640 641 642 643 644 645 646 647 648 649 650 651 652 653 654 655 656 657 658 659 660 661 662 663 664 665 666 667 668 669 670 671 672 673 674 675 676 677 678 679 680 681 682 683 684 685 686 687 688 689 690 691 692 693 694 695 696 697 698 699 700 701 702 703 704 705 706 707 708 709