*** Read Part 5 ***

‘Existence’ of Ignorance

So, does ignorance actually exist; a concrete ‘object’ in space and time? There is the occasional reference in the scriptures (e.g. in the Ṛg Veda) but these speak of related gods, supernatural events and so on. Where such a concept is a part of the pseudo-mystical precursor of Advaita teaching proper, I personally cannot accept it as a valid reference. E.g. I suggest that ‘before light, there was darkness’ does not count as a proof that darkness is an ontologically existent entity!

There are also references in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad and Sureśvara’s Vārttika on Śaṅkara’s bhāṣya but, again, this being the oldest of the Upaniṣads, there is a lot of ‘mystical’ material much pre-dating Śaṅkara’s systematization of the philosophy.

One of the quotations sometimes given to support the contention that scriptures cite ignorance as a real entity is Sureśvara’s Vārttika on Puruṣavidha Brāhmaṇa (1368):

ajñānaṃ saṃśayajānaṃ miśyājānamiti trikam
ajñānaṃ kāraṇaṃ tatra kāryatvaṃ pariśiṣṭayoḥ

This is translated as:

Ignorance, doubt-born knowledge, and mixed knowledge are the triad. Ignorance (ajñāna) is the cause there, while the other two (doubt-born knowledge and mixed knowledge) are effects.

And it is argued that this shows that Sureśvara regarded ignorance as a real entity. But why can’t we translate ‘ajñānam’ as ‘lack of knowledge’? To say that lack of knowledge leads to doubt and confusion seems to make perfect sense without introducing an imaginary entity called ‘ignorance’!

Conclusion

A final quote from ‘Confusions’ Vol. 2:

Suppose that someone enters the cave, without a torch, and suffers an injury. The reason for this is that he tripped over a rock, which he was unable to see. It is clearly true that he couldn’t see because there was no light in the cave, but darkness was not the ‘cause’ of his injury. The cause was the rock which lay in his path. With a good torch, he would have been able to see and avoid it.

When referring to scriptural quotations, or especially with Śaṅkara’s bhāṣya, it is vital that the context is taken into account. Śaṅkara argues with points of view from different philosophies. He incorporates these into his commentary, putting imagined words into the mouth of these ‘pūrvapakṣin-s’ and then contradicts or even ridicules them. Thus, looking at what he says about one particular verse can be misleading.

It is certainly true that he uses darkness as a metaphor for ignorance and he also speaks of us apparently ‘seeing’ darkness in the empirical world. But nowhere does he actually speak of it as a physical entity in the way that we would talk about the stalagmite in the cave. He certainly acknowledges our awareness of darkness but this should not be interpreted as meaning that he regarded it as a physical entity. Obviously he was not, at that time, aware of the fact that light consists of photons in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum and that it is the absence of these that is the cause of our notional ‘perception’ of darkness. I believe that he was simply using it as a very helpful metaphor, in the same way that he used the mirage metaphor to convey the fact that the jñānī still sees the world, despite knowing that it is not real in itself, even though he was almost certainly unaware of the refracting properties of the air above the hot desert sand.

I have to agree with Sri Satchidanandendra that that ‘ignorance’ is an epistemological concept and not an ontological one. The epistemological position is that ignorance is purely subjective, dependent upon the mind and affecting how we perceive reality. He says, for example:

“If one admits the non-dual principle as the final reality, there is no place for any objections. One cannot impute even a trace of ignorance or of any other defect to the non-dual reality. For the Veda says, ‘What could a person see then, and with what?’(Bṛihad. Up. 2.4.1) In empirical experience, on the other hand, wherever and in whatever way Ignorance is experienced, it must be accepted there in that way. There are no objections to be raised or answered.” (The Method of the Vedanta, A. J. Alston)

It is all a question of language and its slipperiness. I believe we are seduced into considering darkness as an actual entity, because of common usage over many generations, and therefore treating it in the same way as a pot when it simply isn’t.

Some might argue that experiencing darkness is a direct perceptual experience. But I would say that the ‘perception of darkness’ is the same thing as perception of the absence of light. It is just that the latter is the correct way of expressing it. We invent a new word in order to provide a simpler way of talking about things and eventually come to believe it its reality.

Of course, the whole darkness-light thing is our metaphor for ignorance-knowledge. I don’t know whether anyone has pointed out the similarity before but it reminds me of the ‘Phlogiston Theory’ in Chemistry in the 17th century. It was supposed that, when something burned, a fire-like substance was released from it. They called it phlogiston. Similarly, it seems that the belief in the ontological existence of ignorance is saying that a substance called ‘ignorance’ is given off (or destroyed) when we learn something new. The Phlogiston Theory had to be abandoned when it was discovered that some metals were heavier after they had burned, which would lead to the conclusion that phlogiston had to have a negative mass. Similarly, if one wants to be whimsical, it could be argued that our ‘knowledge-mass’ is greater after we have learned something new. One could then say that ignorance is therefore equivalent to ‘negative knowledge’. But it makes far more sense to say that there is no such thing as ignorance at all, only lack of knowledge.

Finally, as Arun Murthi pointed out in his paper on mūlāvidyā (another vast topic discussed in ‘Confusions 2’), ‘removing ignorance’ is not the same as ‘removing a thorn’.

***** Series concluded *****