The verse and its meaning · Gaudapada's Karika · Gaudapada — The Firebrand and the Unborn

Nothing Is Ever Born

Gaudapada Karika 4.22

स्वतो वा परतो वापि न किंचिद्वस्तु जायते । सदसत्सदसद्वापि न किंचिद्वस्तु जायते

Meaning · English

Nothing at all is born, whether from itself or from another. Nothing at all is born from both together. Whether it is, or is not, or both is and is not, nothing at all is born.

Gaudapada checks every way a thing could come to be, and finds each one closed. The word for birth is jati, from jan, to come into being. His word for a thing is vastu, a something that stands there. Svatah means from itself, paratah from another. Sat is what exists, asat what does not. Read the clauses in order. A thing cannot be born from itself, because it would have to exist already to cause itself. It cannot be born from something else, because then anything could come from anything. Both together fail for both reasons. Then he turns to what is born. If it already exists, birth is pointless. If it does not exist, nothing is there to be born. If it is both, the two faults join. So the teaching is that nothing is ever born, which is ajati, the unborn. He teaches this here because the schools of his day argued over cause and effect, each defending one kind of birth. He answers them all at once by taking away the ground they stand on. Shankara reads it as the denial of any real cause. Nagarjuna also denied birth from self, other, both and neither, and Gaudapada's form of the argument sounds much like his. Gaudapada uses it to point at the one awareness that never comes and goes.

Take a tangled cord and try to find where one knot began. Follow the loop and it hands you to another loop, and that one to the next. The place where the knot started never turns up. Each answer about where a thing was born points on to another thing, and none of them arrives at a birth.

1. Tonight, pick one ordinary thing near you, such as a cup of tea or a house plant. 2. For five minutes, ask where it came from, then where that came from. Say each answer aloud or write it down. 3. Notice the moment each answer hands you on to another answer and never lands on a first beginning. 4. Next time you hunt for the one cause of a problem, notice the same thing and say so quietly.

A mother stands in her kitchen at six in the morning, her child feverish upstairs. She asks herself whether it was the rain on Tuesday, the school bus, or the leftover rice. She wants one cause she can name, and blame. Gaudapada teaches that no birth can be found from self, from another, from both or from neither. For her, that means the search for a single starting point may be the thing that keeps her stuck. She can set the question of fault aside and give the child water, check the temperature and call the doctor. Ordinary experience confirms that hunting for blame at a bedside rarely finds a clean answer and often wears the searcher out. The limit is plain. The teaching does not tell her what is wrong with the child, it does not lessen her fear, and it does not replace the doctor she needs to call.

अर्थ · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: A Borrowed Proof · Gaudapada Karika 4.20
• Next: No Starting Point, No Cause · Gaudapada Karika 4.23
• All of Gaudapada's Karika · Ask Krishna about it

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