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exists. Nirvana is a transcendental condition. It is infinitude. It is not subject to being acted upon. Nothing excels it. The great Rishis who are free from all desire, describe it to be so. Besides the Nirvana, karma or activity is also eternal.*[1] Aided by ignorance, activity produces five elements and developes worldliness. These five elements are form or Rupa, sensation or Vedana, perception or Sangna, discrimination or Samascar, and consciousness or Vijnana. Virtue and contemplation destroy the power of ignorauce. Activity thus becomes impotent and Nirvana is next attained to.†[2] All these schools are described together in this place, because they represent Indian pessimism, and that the reader may know their points of resemblance and difference.
We now come to your foot-note. "Asat or Prakriti existed first, &c." A brief reply to this is given somewhere in the History of Philosophy. "The pagans said ex-nihilo nihil. The Christian father altered it to ex-nihilo-omnia." Still let us see what our Aryan Rishis say. We call your attention to the verses from the second book called Panch Mahabhuta Viveka of Panchadasi, which speaks in accordance with Upanishads‡[3] ***You will please understand the verses according to their commentary, now very ably translated into Hindi.
- ↑ * And if "activity is also eternal," then how can our philosophical antagonist maintain that matter is not so? Can activity (in the usual sense of the word), whether physical or mental, manifest itself or exist without, or outside of, matter, or to be plainer—outside of any one of its seven states? And how about his contradicting himself? "Activity also eternal." Then there are after all two eternals, how? And he just saying that "two eternals cannot exist at the same time." (See above).—Ed.
- ↑ † We beg to draw our correspondent's attention to the fact that he is again contradicting himself. Or is it the "Boudhas"? But a few lines above he declares "activity...eternal" and now he makes it "impotent"—in other words, kills and annihilates that which is eternal?—Ed.
- ↑ ‡ The reader is invited to turn to the Sanskrit verses of the abovenamed work, at the additional quotations would again require at least two columns. Our magazine avoids as much at possible the publication of anything that is not original matter.—Ed.
