The six darśanas
Notes on the six Indian philosophical schools, one post each, written as a compiler's learning rather than a scholar's verdict. They read best in order: Sāṃkhya lays out the material, Yoga the way out of it, Nyāya and Vaiśeṣika the logic and the inventory, Mīmāṃsā the rite, and Vedānta the end the others were heading for. The diagrams are my own.
- Sāṃkhya1 of 6 · 18 minThe clay before the pot
The oldest of the six and the one most often called scientific. Its first move is the question every creation story skips: a maker can shape a pot, but where did the clay come from?
- Yoga2 of 6 · 22 minA road out of the clay
Sāṃkhya explained how consciousness gets caught in matter, and admitted it had no way out. Patañjali's Yoga is that way: a discipline rather than a theory, and the word does not mean what the studios think it means.
- Nyāya3 of 6 · 24 minWhere there is smoke
The school of how we know and how we argue: four roads to knowledge, one shape for every inference, and a complete catalogue of the ways a losing opponent cheats.
- Vaiśeṣika4 of 6 · 18 minAn inventory of everything
Nyāya's partner: the realist's list of what there is, down to the atom, with space and time counted as things rather than gaps.
- Mīmāṃsā5 of 6 · 28 minThe act keeps its own books
The school that defended the Vedic rite when the Buddhists had all but buried it: the word is older than the god, a text with no author cannot be wrong, and nobody is needed to pay out the fruit of an act.
- Vedānta6 of 6 · 42 minThe seer who saw both
The end of the Veda and, its teachers insist, the end of thought. One set of texts read four ways: the world as appearance, as God's body, as God's dependent, as God himself.