Avidya

From early on, we see an approach to the human condition in ancient India that can be called gnoseological, in the sense that there is a conviction amongst central figures from the Upaniṣads onwards that hitherto unavailable insight has to be sought if we are to develop a proper response to our current life and experience of the world. The Upaniṣads repeatedly show their belief that, ordinarily, people are lacking in the requisite insight, that they are ignorant. This ignorance is not to be removed by ordinary forms of learning. The Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad (4.4.10) acidly remarks that while those who worship ignorance enter blind darkness, those who delight in learning enter an even blinder darkness. The aim of the great teachings of the Upaniṣads is to correct the assumptions of those who too easily think they have reached their goal even while they wallow in ignorance (MuU . 1.2.9; the passage makes clear that the people described here are those who think that ritual performance delivers the ultimate ends). Despite their wide range of concerns, for central insight that the Upaniṣads teach is about the existential power of the essential self ( ātman ) and its relationship with the universal being, that is, brahman . All their teachings about this insight are predicated on the observation that we are normally ignorant of the ultimate reality of the self. Ignorance here is a lack of profound knowledge that goes beyond the knowledge provided by mere learning, an epistemic state that in English perhaps is most naturally given by the word “wisdom” ( vidyā ). Ignorance, then, is avidyā – minimally, a lack of wisdom. But as we will see, in the subsequent uses of this idea, first in early Buddhism and then many centuries later in Advaita Vedānta, avidyā means something more complex.

In early Buddhism, according to R. Gethin, “thirst” or “craving” (tṛṣṇā) and avidyā (Pal. avijja) are the cognitive and affective dimensions of the ordinary cycle of life ( saṃsāra ), and therefore inextricably mixed (Williams, 2000, 46). From early on, Buddhism too understands avidyā as a type of epistemic state; indeed, it is directly identified with cognition (saṃjñā; Pal. saññā) in the Suttanipāta (Harvey, 1995, 134). Already from these uses, it is clear thatavidyā/avijja is not just ignorance of the truths that the Buddha taught. A. Wayman long ago suggested therefore that avidyā be translated as “unwisdom” in both Buddhist and Hindu contexts, a term whose meaning – just likeavidyā – needs to be explored (Wayman, 1955, 253–68; 1957, 21–25). Later, B. Matilal argued comprehensively that “ignorance” does not entirely capture the import of avidyā, starting with the simple point that “ignorance” has only the negative meaning of “lack of knowledge” or “absence of knowledge” (Matilal, 1980, 154–164). His second point was that while it is grammatically negative, having been formed with the negative particle a, it does not just mean the negation, absence or lack of anything. If ignorance only means a lack of knowledge, then it cannot play the critical role of conditioning the arising of suffering-inducing construction that the twelve-membered chain asks of it; there is no action in deep sleep, which is nevertheless characterized by lack of knowledge.

B. Matilal continued his analysis through the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya, where Vasubandhu looks back on several centuries of Buddhist usage. Vasubandhu compares the use of the negative particle (by which it reverses the usage of vidyā) here with that in amitra (non-friend, to mean enemy) and anṛta (untruth). An absence of friendship is not enemity, he points out, and says avidyā should be treated as a similar term, something that actually occurs and is not simply an absence.

The system of Advaita Vedānta takes up the concept of avidyā as originally indicated in the Upaniṣads; but it is also, in a profound sense, similar to the Buddhist call for a radical revision of the ordinary understanding of life. It is in Advaita that we find a long and complex discussion over the nature of avidyā. In order to understand its nature and role in Advaita, however, we must look at it within a constellation of concepts: ajñāna, māyā, vyavahāra, anirvacanīya and mithyā. In a fundamental way, they all refer to the same thing, namely, the state of the manifold world of objects and individual subjects compared and contrasted with the sole, irreducible, and ultimate principle of reality, brahman (Ram-Prasad, 2001, 177, where I use “primal misunderstanding” for avidyā). The great challenge for Advaita is to reconcile its claim that there is only brahman with the riotous plurality of objects and subjects apparent in the transactions of experience. Precisely because they wish to deny that what appears in experience is not what is real, the Advaitins have to work very hard on saving the appearance, under threat of incoherence. Over some ten centuries, starting with Gauḍapāda but more so, Śaṅkara (8th cent.), the definition of these concepts and the relationships between them were worked out, with many internal debates and disagreements. In what follows, a general outline of the developed theories rather than a detailed account of their historical development will be given.

The first concept to look at is that of vyavahāra – activity, transactions, or ordinary life. This is a level of reality for the Advaitins that is to be contrasted with the pāramārthika sattā or transcendental reality. The empirical has its own coherence and consistency, for in it the instruments and validation of knowledge (pramāṇas) operate, as does language, so that the sacred texts can be taught and ethical conduct pursued. But this antiskeptical attitude to the world does not mean it is irreducibly real; for, through some process (over which there is much debate), this transactional and manifold reality is realized in consciousness as less than ultimately real, indeed, as something to be discarded by consciousness, leaving consciousness’ awareness of its own singular yet universal presence as brahman.

This transactional world has the feature of being both phenomenologically coherent and ontologically misleading. As such, it is māyā (illusion), metonymically like the magic of a conjurer, seeming but not being as it seems. In reading māyā thus, Śaṅkara develops on a relatively late Upaniṣad, the Śvetāśvataropaniṣad, which identifies primal matter ( prakṛti ) with māyā (ŚvetU. 4.10); other Vedānta schools read māyā here as what is wondrous (vicitra). So, in determining the ontological status of this manifold world, can we say of it that it exists or not? (Does the magical object of the conjurer “exist”?) The Advaitins respond that its status is anirvacanīya, indeterminate. In an analogical model for indeterminacy, they ask us to consider the case of a person mistaking a rope for a snake in the dark. There is a phenomenal event: the cognition (jñāna) of taking there to be a snake (with consequent subjective states like panic and the desire to run). Strictly to count as nonexistent, an entity should not enter into experience or be an object of cognition; the Advaitins cluster logically and contingently impossible objects into this category, like the son of a childless woman and golden mountains. But, of course, the snake does not exist in the way the rope does, since the cognition of a rope is validated through confirmatory tests (as structured by the pramāṇa procedures), while the initial cognitive episode, in which the presence of a snake was taken to be experienced, is invalidated through subsequent tests. The status of a purely phenomenological object like the snake is indeterminate between existence and nonexistence, as Vācaspati first puts it in his Bhāmatīcommentary on Śaṅkara’s Brahmasūtrabhāṣya 1.1.1 (Ram-Prasad, 2002, 115). But, according to the Advaitins, the world itself is thus: phenomenally present but not independently real (for the rope itself is only the object of a further, if more coherent, cognition). Since there is no way in which it can be determined that the whole manifold world of objects is more than just phenomenal, the ontological status of the world is indeterminate.

The Advaitins have a specific term for the ontological status of this indeterminate, phenomenal world of ordinary experience: mithyā. The locus classicus of the discussion on mithyā is in the Advaitasiddhi of Madhusūdana (Bhattacharya, 1992, provides text, translation, and commentary on the opening section detailing the definitions of mithyā). He directly says that mithyā is anirvacanīya . But he also gives a technical definition, which may be paraphrased as follows: "An entity X is mithyā if it is precisely that thing [the counterpositive] which is never found [because of its absolute absence] in Y [the substratum], where it is cognized."

The counterpositive (pratiyogin) is, broadly, an entity which is defined by being that which contradicts its absence. In the cognition, “there is no pot on the table,” the counterpositive is “pot,” and in “there is no stick on the table,” it is “stick”; in this way, different objects of cognition are determined even if the physical situation towards which the cognitions are directed is just a table with nothing on it. Absences come in different types: the absence of a pot on a table after it is destroyed is different from the mutual absence of pot and table in each other. And the most metaphysically potent notion of absence is “absolute absence” (antyantābhāva): for example, the constitutive absence in all time periods of darkness in light. The substratum is whatever ontological being it is on which the cognition operates. So the mistakenly identified snake is mithyā in relation to the substratum rope, which is constitutively not a snake (it never has been and never will be a snake; the snake is always necessarily absent in it). The Advaitins’ argument is that the manifold world is itself mithyā in relation to brahman, which is the substratum. At one and the same time, this formulation specifies two different things: (a) there is some entity which is the phenomenological object (that which is cognized); but (b) its nature is such that it is always ontologically absent in that which it is taken to be. In being conscious of brahman (i.e. in being conscious at all, forbrahman is consciousness), we take ourselves to be conscious of the manifold world of objects. But that world is precisely nothing other than what is always absent in brahman, because brahman alone is ultimately real. Asbrahman is real (sat) and only what is never the object of cognition is unreal (asat), the world is something less than real but more than unreal. It is, we could say, “subreal,” and that is mithyā. (Note that this assumes with most opponents of Advaita that there can be no noncognizable real objects.) In his late and still authoritative primer on Advaita, Dharmarāja sums up the matter clearly: mithyā is the absence of X in precisely the locus where X appears to exist (see, especially, the chapter on anumāna [inference] in Dharmarāja’s Vedāntaparibhāṣa).

When consciousness functions as if the world is sat and not mithyā, then it is in the epistemic state of avidyā. Avidyā is, then, the “mis-taking” of what is mithyā as sat, and consequently, of not realizing what is indeed sat, namely brahman consciousness. Here we see a continuity with the Buddhist approach: avidyā is not merely ignorance of what is real and what is not; it is the “mis-taking” of what is not real as real. It is the pervasive epistemic state of individual consciousness; it is the condition of saṃsāra in which consciousness has not yet made the switch to realizing its nonduality with universal consciousness.

When talking of specific states of avidyā, Advaitins also use the term ajñāna. The two terms effectively mean the same thing for Advaitins: that state of consciousness in which the world is taken to be sat rather than mithyā, and correspondingly, the ultimate reality of consciousness as brahman is not realized. Relative to a cognition (jñāna) of a rope, which is validated by the tests of the pramāṇas, the cognitive event, which had “snake” for its object, was both (a) invalid and (b) phenomenal. That cognitive episode, according to the Advaitins, is ajñāna; a negation ofjñāna but like it and liable to be mistaken for it. This interpretation of the negative particle – found in the case of both avidyā and ajñāna – is grammatically consistent. B. Matilal discusses Patañjali’s commentary on Pāṇini’sAṣṭādhyāyī 2.2.6, on the interpretation of a negative compound (Matilal, 1980, 156). The example there is “a-brāhmaṇa” (not-a-Brahman). One who is born a Brahman but does not behave like one or vice versa can be called an abrāhmaṇa, according to Patañjali. B. Matilal points out that in the same manner, what can be mistaken forvidyā is called avidyā. That is how ajñāna is used as well (Appayya Dīkṣita, the 17th-cent. Advaitin provides a synopsis of different definitions of these terms in his famous survey of extant Advaita subschools, theSiddhāntaleśasaṃgraha, section 5).

The complexity of these terms means that not only their definitions but also the relationships between them are many and varied. Another formulation of the relationship between avidyā/ajñāna and māyā sees them as complementary: the former refers to the concealing power (āvaraṇaśakti) of consciousness that stops it from realizing its nonduality with brahman, while the latter refers to the projective power (vikṣepaśakti) by which the phenomenal world is experienced.

It is important to the Advaitin that avidyā/ajñāna cannot be construed as an absence of awareness but as an actual occurrence (bhāvarūpa), a “positive entity.” The reason the Advaitin has to argue that avidyā/ajñāna is not a lack of cognition (the “negative” state of ignorance) is tied to the universal and singular reality of brahman. Ifbrahman is ever- and all-present, then that is only to say that the only reality is universal consciousness. Now,avidyā is held to be the condition under which universality of consciousness is not recognized by the individuated consciousness, which therefore does not realize its nonduality with the former. If avidyā were an absence of or block on consciousness (as one would think mere ignorance to be), then it would be something other thanbrahman; and that would violate the requirement for nonduality. Consequently, the Advaitins argue that avidyā is itself a state of consciousness, albeit one which is in massive, global error about ultimate reality. By granting that ordinary epistemic processes of validation (the pramāṇas) can function on the empirical (vyavahāra) level, Advaita secures an epistemologically viable commitment to the phenomenal world (for the very sacred teachings are conveyed only through language, which is a product of that world!).

While opponents question the coherence of the idea of a world simultaneously phenomenally available and erroneous, they also attack the idea of avidyā/ajñāna as an occurrence (bhāvarūpa) rather than an absence of cognition. If avidyā is a conscious state and therefore ultimately part of brahman, does that not mean thatbrahman (or pure consciousness [śuddhacaitanya]) has the blemish of global error, of getting it massively wrong? This objection is put in detail by the Viśiṣṭādvaitin Vedāntadeśika in the Tattvamuktākalāpa (Srinivasa Chari, 1988, 252–60). The advaitic response to this line of criticism is to locate avidyā in individuated consciousness (jīva) and say that there is a virtual (vivarta) causal difference between pure brahman consciousness and its individuated trope, the limited consciousness (jīva). There is an operative distinction between consciousness understood asbrahman and as jīva, with the latter marked by avidyā/ajñāna. But this difference is not through a substantive transformation (pariṇāma) of brahman into jīva. Therefore, there is no ultimate difference between brahman andjīva, but at the same time, there is sufficient distinction between them for brahman to be free from error. But that then takes the argument over different theories of causation, which we cannot cover here.

One final issue about avidyā/ajñāna concerns the claim (found in Vedāntadeśika, amongst others) that it is indeed just ignorance (mugdhatva): “I do not cognize (e.g. see) X” is simply to fail to see it. Therefore, ajñāna is not an occurrence (having the form of being [bhāvarūpa]). The advaitic response to this, for instance, in the later Advaitin Rāmatīrthayati’s commentary (Vidvanmanorañjanī) on the Vedāntasāra, is to argue that an analysis of “I do not cognize X” is actually some sort of cognitive occurrence, for it is clearly different from, say, a person not seeing X when asleep. The reflexivity that renders the judgement that I cannot cognize X shows that there is a cognitive state has indeed occurred, in an actual state of avidyā/ajñāna with regard to X; ajñāna is not merely the absence of a cognition with reference to X.

The concept of avidyā – together with its equivalent, ajñāna – performs many functions in Advaita, where it became a central notion from the very beginning. An examination of it takes us into a cluster of intimately related concepts that characterize Advaita, and gives us an indication of the complex metaphysics of Advaita Vedānta.