Sāṃkhya

Sāṃkhya (सांख्य) means "enumeration". It is the oldest of the six classical schools, traced to the sage Kapila and set down in the seventy-odd verses of Īśvarakṛṣṇa's Sāṃkhya-kārikā. It starts from a plain observation: life hurts, and no remedy we try works for good. Its answer is knowledge. Count out everything that can ever be experienced, and notice that the one who experiences is not on the list.

Almost every later tradition borrowed this list. Yoga practises it, the Gītā teaches with it, Āyurveda and Tantra build on it, and Vedānta keeps the map while changing what it finally means. This page gives the map first, then the fuller Vedāntic reading from Tattvabodha.

The twenty-five tattvas

A tattva (तत्त्व, "that-ness") is a basic principle. Read the map from the top. Puruṣa stands apart and only witnesses. Prakṛti unfolds step by step, from the finest thing in you (the power to decide) down to the coarsest (earth). The order runs from subtle to gross, not from past to present.

Swipe sideways to see the whole map.

Rows in the lower grid belong together: space, sound, hearing and speech in the first row, down to earth, smell and procreation in the last. The numbers follow the "1 + 24" count, with Puruṣa first. Many lists count him last, as the twenty-fifth.

The three guṇas

Prakṛti is not a substance that has three qualities. It is the three guṇas, the way a rope is its strands, and "strand" is one meaning of guṇa (गुण). They never occur alone. Everything in nature, a thought as much as a stone, is some mix of the three, and only the proportion differs.

The three oppose each other and still cooperate. The kārikā compares them to a lamp, where wick, oil and flame are unlike one another and together give light. While the three balance exactly, prakṛti is unmanifest. Any tilt, and the unfolding begins.

How the world unfolds

Nothing is created from nothing. This is satkārya-vāda: the effect is already present in its cause, as butter is in milk and a tree in its seed. "Creation" (sṛṣṭi) only means that what was latent becomes manifest, and dissolution means it goes latent again. The stuff is constant. Only its state changes.

Tattvabodha tells it in three stages: causal, then subtle, then gross. From the causal seed come five subtle elements, each carrying all three guṇas. That gives fifteen ingredients, and every part of a living being is made from one of them.

One element, three products

The bottom row explains itself. The mind has to stand behind all five senses, so it is made from the sattva of all five elements. Prāṇa has to power all five organs of action, so it is made from the rajas of all five.

Pañcīkaraṇa: how subtle becomes gross

A subtle element is pure. A gross element is a blend, and it takes the name of whatever dominates it. Each one is half its own subtle element and one eighth of each of the other four. This is the "½ + 4⁄8" on the old charts. The commentary's image: eating fruits one at a time, then as a salad.

What each element can be known by

The elements also stack. Each keeps the quality of the one before and adds its own, so the denser the element, the more senses can reach it.

"Earth" means matter in its solid state, not soil. Water is the liquid state, air the gaseous, fire is heat and light, and space is the room they occupy.

The person, layer by layer

The same ingredients, seen in one individual. Tattvabodha sorts them twice. By texture there are three bodies (śarīra-traya). By function there are five sheaths (pañca-kośa). They are one person cut two ways: the subtle body alone divides into three sheaths.

Knowing, wanting, acting (jānāti, icchati, yatate) is the order in which the three middle sheaths fire. You read what concerts are on, you settle on one, and your legs take you there.

The instruments inside the subtle body

How one perception happens

1. Objecta sound, a colour
2. Senseregisters it, nothing more
3. Manas"it is this kind of thing"
4. Ahaṃkāra"it concerns me"
5. Buddhidecides what it is and what to do
6. Puruṣawitnesses, and does nothing

The kārikā calls the inner instrument the gatekeeper and the ten outer organs its doors. The outer ten work only in the present moment. The inner three range over past, present and future. Everything they gather is handed to buddhi, and buddhi presents it to the seer.

Three states of experience

A dream replays what waking recorded, sometimes recombined. In deep sleep neither the outer nor the inner world is there, and yet you report it afterwards: "I slept well, I knew nothing." Something was present to notice the blank.

The seer

Here the whole map turns over. All three bodies are made of elements, so all three are matter, the mind included. Matter has no awareness of its own and cannot produce any. Yet body and mind plainly behave as if aware. So the awareness is borrowed, and a loan needs a lender who is not himself a borrower.

The commentary's picture is a light bulb. Neither glass nor filament shines by itself. Something unseen makes the filament glow, and through it the bulb. When the bulb breaks the electricity is not destroyed. It only has nowhere to flow.

Apply the two laws to everything on the map, and what remains is described in six words:

• चैतन्यस्वरूपःcaitanya-svarūpaḥof the nature of consciousness itself
• स्वतन्त्रःsvatantraḥindependent of matter
• निर्गुणःnirguṇaḥwithout attributes
• नित्यःnityaḥbeyond time
• सर्वगतःsarvagataḥnot located anywhere
• एकःekaḥone

अहं चैतन्यस्वरूपः स्वतन्त्रः निर्गुणः नित्यः सर्वगतः एकः आत्मा अस्मि । ahaṃ caitanya-svarūpaḥ svatantraḥ nirguṇaḥ nityaḥ sarvagataḥ ekaḥ ātmā asmi "I am Ātmā: consciousness itself, independent, without attributes, timeless, all-pervading, one."

The kārikā gives Puruṣa five marks of its own (19): witness, alone, neutral, seer, non-doer. The last of the six above, "one", is exactly where the two schools part.

Sāṃkhya and Vedānta

The two share the map and the method of telling seer from seen. They disagree about what the map finally shows. The old one-page charts usually blend both, which is why they can be confusing.

Patañjali's Yoga takes Sāṃkhya's map almost unchanged, adds Īśvara as a special puruṣa, and supplies the practice. The eight limbs are the way to make the seer–seen distinction a lived fact and not only an idea.

Freedom

Neither school asks you to change the world or leave it. The mistake is one of identity, so the cure is knowledge, and the kārikā states its content in three short phrases: nāsmi, na me, nāham. "I am not this, nothing here is mine, there is no 'I' in it."

Vedānta names the path too. Listen to the teaching (śravaṇa), reason until no doubt is left (manana), then dwell on it until old habits of thought give way (nididhyāsana).

Sources: the "Sāṃkhya Darśana" chart by J. Manetta (1981); Swami Paramarthananda's class notes on Tattvabodha (2008), chapters on the three bodies, the states and sheaths, Ātmā and creation; and Īśvarakṛṣṇa's Sāṃkhya-kārikā, cited by verse number. The map follows the chart's three-way split of the "I"-maker by guṇa. The kārikā (25) derives all eleven instruments from its sattva side. Kapila is a legendary figure and his date is unknown. The kārikā is usually placed in the 4th–5th century CE.