Accident and Edition - John Shore’s translation of the Laghuyogavāsiṣṭha

In: Steiner, Roland (Hrsg.): Highland Philology: Results of a Text-Related Kashmir Panel at the 31st DOT, Marburg 2010. Universitätsverlag Halle-Wittenberg 2012, pp. 143-154 (Studia Indologica Universitatis Halensis ; 4) . ISBN 978-3-86977-040-6

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Abstract

In the philosophy of the Mokṣopāya we find a peculiar mixture of accident and determination when it comes to explaining creation, for the creator Brahmā determines the future creation in a unique manner: his first accidental ideas automatically become the determining coordinates within his universe. According to this text, everything is produced by the mind and is thus no more than an insubstantial, “empty” imagination, and consequently the whole world is just a collective imagination of human minds within the mind of Brahmā. As we read in this text, fire burns upwards and water flows downwards, simply because the Creator had this idea in mind at the beginning of creation and for this reason no one within Brahmā’s universe will be able to change these natural laws. In another universe created or rather imagined by another creator, the basic rules could be entirely different, so that in this theory of determination (niyati) the content of such “natural laws” is unpredictable. Brahmā’s first thoughts are not premeditated, rather the opposite (abuddhipūrva), simply because the first ideas are by definition unprecedented and—as the Mokṣopāya would maintain—without a cause.