H INDU P HILOSOPHY : S AMKHYA, Y OGA AND V EDANTA By Stacey and Emily

S AMKHYA The word Samkhya means number. The philosophy of Samkhya is the Universe is consisting of two realities; purusha and prakrti. Purusha is spirit/consciousness and prakrti is matter.purushaprakrti

P RAKRITI Prakriti is comprised of three qualities Tamas, Rajas, and Sattva. Tamas is the Dullness, Dark, stupid, ugly, and the sloth. Rajas is the Passion, Active, fierce, Energy. Sattva is the Virtue, Beautiful, good, wise, Intelligence & self consciousness.

P URUSHA Purusha - it is the Self, the Absolute, pure consciousness. It is the conscious witness which neither acts or refrains from its action.

Y OGA Yoga is one of the 6 systems of Indian Philosophy and it has influences on many Indian schools. The aspects of Yoga have a larger role then the intellectual part of it, which is mostly based on the philosophy of the samkhya. Yoga holds the beliefs that achieving spiritual freedom, happens when you are freed from bondages of matter which are there because of ignorance.

Y OGA Yoga helps you control your mind and actions and re- enter the state of purity and consciousness. Once you have controlled your mental state, and end the attachment to material objects, you can then enter a state of deep concentration, which ends in Bliss and ecstatic union with reality.

V EDANTA Vedanta is also one of the 6 systems of Indian philosophy, and the one that forms most of the bases in all Hindu schools. Vedanta means the conclusion of the earliest sacred scripture in India, the “Vedas”. This applies to the Upanishads which were explanations of the “Vedas”. It also applies to the school that came out of the study of the Upanishads. The three Vedanta texts are the Upanishads, which were the most favoured, the Brahma- sutras, which are short one worded texts of the doctrines of the Upanishads, and the Bhagavadgita which is poetic writing. Bhagavadgita

V EDANTA All Vedanta schools are different, but they all share some beliefs. These beliefs are: “transmigration of the self”, and “desirability of release from the cycle of rebirths”. They also believe in Karma which means that you are the agent of your own acts. So if you do something good for someone else that means that something good will automatically happen to you.