Moksha: A Comprehensive Overview
Moksha, also known as vimoksha, vimukti, and mukti, is a term in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism that refers to various forms of emancipation, liberation, or release from the cycle of death and rebirth (samsara). In Hindu traditions, moksha is considered the ultimate goal of human life, along with dharma (virtuous, proper, moral life), artha (material prosperity, income security, means of life), and kama (pleasure, sensuality, emotional fulfillment). These four concepts are collectively known as Puruṣārtha.
Etymology
Moksha is derived from the Sanskrit root word, muc, which means to free, let go, release, liberate.
Definition and Meanings
The definition and meaning of moksha vary between various schools of Indian religions. Moksha means freedom, liberation, but from what and how is where the schools differ. Moksha is also a concept that means liberation from rebirth or samsara. This liberation can be attained while one is on earth (jivanmukti) or eschatologically (karmamukti, videhamukti). Some Indian traditions emphasize liberation through concrete, ethical action within the world. This liberation is an epistemological transformation that permits one to see the truth and reality behind the fog of ignorance.
Moksha has been defined not merely as absence of suffering and release from bondage to samsara. Various schools of Hinduism also explain the concept as presence of the state of paripurna-brahmanubhava (the experience of oneness with Brahman, the One Supreme Self), a state of knowledge, peace, and bliss. For example, Vivekachudamani, an ancient book on moksha, explains one of many meditative steps on the path to moksha as:
Beyond caste, creed, family or lineage,
That which is without name and form, beyond merit and demerit,
That which is beyond space, time and sense-objects,
You are that, God himself; Meditate this within yourself. ||Verse 254||
— Vivekachudamani, 8th Century CE
Eschatological Sense
Moksha is a concept associated with the cycle of birth and rebirth (samsara). The idea of samsara originated with religious movements in the first millennium BCE. These movements saw human life as bondage to a repeated process of rebirth. By release from this cycle, the suffering involved in this cycle also ended. This release was called moksha, nirvana, kaivalya, mukti, and other terms in various Indian religious traditions. Moksha is commonly believed to be an otherworldly reality, only achievable at the end of life, not during. However, there is also a notion that moksha can be achieved during life in the form of a state of liberation, known as jivan-mukti.
Eschatological ideas evolved in Hinduism. In earliest Vedic literature, heaven and hell sufficed soteriological curiosities. Over time, the ancient scholars observed that people vary in the quality of virtuous or sinful life they lead, and began questioning how differences in each person’s puṇya (merit, good deeds) or pāp (demerit, sin) as human beings affected their afterlife. This question led to the conception of an afterlife where the person stayed in heaven or hell, in proportion to their merit or demerit, then returned to earth and were reborn, the cycle continuing indefinitely. The rebirth idea ultimately flowered into the ideas of samsara, or transmigration — where one’s balance sheet of karma determined one’s rebirth. Along with this idea of samsara, the ancient scholars developed the concept of moksha, as a state that released a person from the samsara cycle. Moksha release in eschatological sense in these ancient literature of Hinduism suggests van Buitenen, comes from self-knowledge and consciousness of oneness of supreme soul.
Epistemological and Psychological Senses
Scholars provide various explanations of the meaning of moksha in epistemological and psychological senses. For example, Deutsche sees moksha as transcendental consciousness, the perfect state of being, of self-realization, of freedom, and of “realizing the whole universe as the Self”.
Moksha in Hinduism, suggests Klaus Klostermaier, implies a setting-free of hitherto fettered faculties, a removing of obstacles to an unrestricted life, permitting a person to be more truly a person in the full sense; the concept presumes an unused human potential of creativity, compassion, and understanding which had been blocked and shut out. Moksha is more than liberation from a life-rebirth cycle of suffering (samsara); the Vedantic school separates this into two: jivanmukti (liberation in this life) and videhamukti (liberation after death). Moksha in this life includes psychological liberation from adhyasa (fears besetting one’s life) and avidya (ignorance or anything that is not true knowledge).
As a State of Perfection
Many schools of Hinduism see moksha as a state of perfection. The concept was seen as a natural goal beyond dharma. Moksha, in the epics and ancient literature of Hinduism, is seen as achievable by the same techniques necessary to practice dharma. Self-discipline is the path to dharma, moksha is self-discipline that is so perfect that it becomes unconscious, second nature. Dharma is thus a means to moksha.
The Samkhya school of Hinduism, for example, suggests that one of the paths to moksha is to magnify one’s sattvam. To magnify one’s sattvam, one must develop oneself where one’s sattvam becomes one’s instinctive nature. Many schools of Hinduism thus understood dharma and moksha as two points of a single journey of life, a journey for which the viaticum was discipline and self-training.
Nagarjuna’s Challenge
Dharma and moksha, suggested Nagarjuna in the 2nd century, cannot be goals on the same journey. He pointed to the differences between the world we live in and the freedom implied in the concept of moksha. They are so different that dharma and moksha could not be intellectually related. Dharma requires worldly thought, moksha is unworldly understanding, a state of bliss. “How can the worldly thought-process lead to unworldly understanding?”, asked Nagarjuna. Karl Potter explains the answer to this challenge as one of context and framework, the emergence of broader general principles of understanding from thought processes that are limited in one framework.
Adi Shankara’s Challenge
Adi Shankara in the 8th century AD, like Nagarjuna earlier, examined the difference between the world one lives in and moksha, a state of freedom and release one hopes for. Unlike Nagarjuna, Shankara considers the characteristics between the two. The world one lives in requires action as well as thought; our world, he suggests, is impossible without vyavahara (action and plurality). The world is interconnected, one object works on another, input is transformed into output, change is continuous and everywhere. Moksha, suggests Shankara, is a final perfect, blissful state where there can be no change, where there can be no plurality of states. It has to be a state of thought and consciousness that excludes action. He questioned: “How can action-oriented techniques by which we attain the first three goals of man (kama, artha, and dharma) be useful to attain the last goal, namely moksha?”
Scholars suggest Shankara’s challenge to the concept of moksha parallels those of Plotinus against the Gnostics, with one important difference: Plotinus accused the Gnostics of exchanging an anthropocentric set of virtues with a theocentric set in pursuit of salvation; Shankara challenged that the concept of moksha implied an exchange of anthropocentric set of virtues (dharma) with a blissful state that has no need for values. Shankara goes on to suggest that anthropocentric virtues suffice.
The Vaisnavas’ Challenge
Vaishnavism, one of the bhakti schools of Hinduism, is devoted to the worship of God, sing his name, anointing his image or idol, and has many sub-schools. Vaishnavas suggest that dharma and moksha cannot be two different or sequential goals or states of life. Instead, they suggest God should be kept in mind constantly to simultaneously achieve dharma and moksha, so constantly that one comes to feel one cannot live without God’s loving presence. This school emphasized love and adoration of God as the path to “moksha” (salvation and release), rather than works and knowledge. Their focus became divine virtues, rather than anthropocentric virtues. Daniel Ingalls regards Vaishnavas’ position on moksha as similar to the Christian position on salvation, and Vaishnavism as the school whose views on dharma, karma, and moksha dominated the initial impressions and colonial-era literature on Hinduism, through the works of Thibaut, Max Müller, and others.
The concept of moksha represented one of the many expansions in Hindu Vedic ideas of life and the afterlife. In the Vedas, there were three stages of life: studentship, householdship, and retirement. During the Upanishadic era, Hinduism expanded this to include a fourth stage of life: complete abandonment. In Vedic literature, there are three modes of experience: waking, dream, and deep sleep. The Upanishadic era expanded it to include turiyam — the stage beyond deep sleep. The Vedas suggest three goals of man: kama, artha, and dharma. To these, the Upanishadic era added moksha.
The acceptance of the concept of moksha in some schools of Hindu philosophy was slow. These refused to recognize moksha for centuries, considering it irrelevant. The Mimamsa school, for example, denied the goal and relevance of moksha well into the 8th century AD, until the arrival of a Mimamsa scholar named Kumarila. Instead of moksha, Mimamsa school of Hinduism considered the concept of heaven as sufficient to answer the question: what lay beyond this world after death. Other schools of Hinduism, over time, accepted the moksha concept and refined it over time.
It is unclear when the core ideas of samsara and moksha were developed in ancient India. Patrick Olivelle suggests these ideas likely originated with new religious movements in the first millennium BCE. Mukti and moksha ideas, suggests J. A. B. van Buitenen, seem traceable to yogis in Hinduism, with long hair, who chose to live on the fringes of society, given to self-induced states of intoxication and ecstasy, possibly accepted as medicine men and “sadhus” by the ancient Indian society. Moksha to these early concept developers was the abandonment of the established order, not in favor of anarchy, but in favor of self-realization, to achieve release from this world.
In its historical development, the concept of moksha appears in three forms: Vedic, yogic, and bhakti. In the Vedic period, moksha was ritualistic. Mokṣa was claimed to result from properly completed rituals such as those before Agni — the fire deity. The significance of these rituals was to reproduce and recite the cosmic creation event described in the Vedas; the description of knowledge on different levels — adhilokam, adhibhutam, adhiyajnam, adhyatmam — helped the individual transcend to moksa. Knowledge was the means, the ritual its application.
By the middle to late Upanishadic period, the emphasis shifted to knowledge, and ritual activities were considered irrelevant to the attainment of moksha. Yogic moksha replaced Vedic rituals with personal development and meditation, with hierarchical creation of the ultimate knowledge in self as the path to moksha. Yogic moksha principles were accepted in many other schools of Hinduism, albeit with differences. For example, Adi Shankara in his book on moksha suggests:
अर्थस्य निश्चयो दृष्टो विचारेण हितोक्तितः |
न स्नानेन न दानेन प्राणायमशतेन वा || १३ ||
By reflection, reasoning, and instructions of teachers, the truth is known,
Not by ablutions, not by making donations, nor by performing hundreds of breath control exercises. || Verse 13 ||
— Vivekachudamani, 8th Century AD
Bhakti moksha created the third historical path, where neither rituals nor meditative self-development were the way, rather it was inspired by constant love and contemplation of God, which over time results in a perfect union with God. Some Bhakti schools evolved their ideas where God became the means and the end, transcending moksha; the fruit of bhakti is bhakti itself. In the history of Indian religious traditions, additional ideas and paths to moksha beyond these three appeared over time.
Synonyms
The words moksha, nirvana (nibbana), and kaivalya are sometimes used synonymously because they all refer to the state that liberates a person from all causes of sorrow and suffering. However, in modern era literature, these concepts have different premises in different religions. Nirvana, a concept common in Buddhism, is accompanied by the realization that all experienced phenomena are not self; while moksha, a concept common in many schools of Hinduism, is acceptance of Self (soul), realization of liberating knowledge, the consciousness of Oneness with Brahman, all existence, and understanding the whole universe as the Self. Nirvana starts with the premise that there is no Self, moksha on the other hand, starts with the premise that everything is the Self; there is no consciousness in the state of nirvana, but everything is One unified consciousness in the state of moksha.
Kaivalya, a concept akin to moksha, rather than nirvana, is found in some schools of Hinduism such as the Yoga school. Kaivalya is the realization of aloofness with liberating knowledge of one’s self and disentanglement from the muddled mind and cognitive apparatus. For example, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra suggests:
After the dissolution of avidya (ignorance),
comes removal of communion with material world,
this is the path to Kaivalyam.
— Yoga Sutra (Sadhana Pada), 2:24–25
Nirvana and moksha, in all traditions, represent resting in one’s true essence, named Purusha or Atman, or pointed at as Nirvana, but described in very different ways. Some scholars assert that the Nirvana of Buddhism is the same as the Brahman in Hinduism, a view other scholars and Jayatilleke disagree with. Buddhism rejects the idea of Brahman, and the metaphysical ideas about soul (atman) are also rejected by Buddhism, while those ideas are essential to moksha in Hinduism. In Buddhism, nirvana is ‘blowing out’ or ‘extinction’. In Hinduism, moksha is ‘identity or oneness with Brahman’. Realization of anatta (anatman) is essential to Buddhist nirvana. Realization of atman (atta) is essential to Hindu moksha.
Conclusion
Moksha is a central concept in Hinduism and is considered the ultimate goal of human life. It represents liberation from the cycle of birth and rebirth (samsara) and can be achieved through various paths, including self-discipline, self-realization, and meditation. The concept of moksha has evolved over time and is associated with different philosophical schools of Hinduism, each with its interpretation of the concept. The idea of moksha has also influenced other Indian religions, such as Buddhism and Jainism, and is often used interchangeably with terms such as nirvana and kaivalya.
