SAIVA-SIDDHANTA

THE NATURE OF THE JlVA. 323
bodily pleasures. Let him cut asunder this desire and avers
ion, love and hate, like and dislike, then will he lose this
birth. But is it
possible for him to cut off this desire by
merely desiring the desirelessness ? Some philosophers opine
that this is possible, but they speak without their book. Here
it is, that the second characteristic of man which we spoke of
before is brought into play, namely, u/bgsQ&(n9-srfl $6\)6u<7Du> f
not being able to exist without a support.
It must support
itself by clinging to the body and the world or to the Lord.
Jf it must give up the world, it must cling to the Lord, if
there is no God, the soul must go back to the world and
again resume its round of births. It is a noteworthy feature of
all systems which do not postulate the existence of a soul that
they do not postulate God either. It will be seen how subtly
Gautama Buddha avoids the question of the existence of the
soul. This was so, inasmuch as he denied the existence of
God. His followers followed the system to its logical con--
elusion, and denied the existence of the soul or at any rate
postulated
its utter annihilation. What existed after? Nirvana
nothing, however much some scholars might try to prove to
the contra^. The one exception was the Nirisvara Sankhyan
who thought he denied God, the author of the universe, yet
affirmed the separate existence of a soul. However as I said,
the soul must exist in the world or in the Lord and all the
religious and moral practices are prescribed for bringing about
the clinging to the Lord, after the soul frees itself from the
attachment to the world.* This latter attachment is
by itself
the means whereby
attachment.
he can effect his severance from the old
(Kural 350.)
* We know how difficult it is to give up some of our habits and
often one is advised to take to some other habit less serious to cure one
self of the old habit. People take to chewing tobacco or^smoking to get
rid of the habit of snuffing. I know a doctor who advised one to take
to opium to cure hiaiielf of the vice of drunkenness,