Ajñāna

Ajñāna · a-jñāna, “ignorance”

Jñāna has other meanings too: see all meanings of Jñāna.

Grammar: neuter noun; a (not) with jñāna (knowledge, from the root jñā, to know): “the absence of knowledge”.

Meaning: ignorance; above all, not knowing one’s own true nature, the ātmā, and taking the body, senses and mind to be the Self. It is the root of saṃsāra, the round of birth and death, and it is ended by jñāna (knowledge of the ātmā) and by bhakti. It is also called avidyā.

In the scriptures: the Bhāgavata Purāṇa speaks of ajñāna as a darkness, a knot, an ocean and a seed, and always of its ending.

The first creation. Maitreya tells Vidura that Brahmā first created the five vikāras (modifications) of ajñāna: andhatāmisra, tāmisra, mahāmoha, moha and tamas, the last being avidyā, not knowing one’s own svarūpa. Seeing this creation full of pāpa, which the text glosses as ajñāna, Brahmā did not approve of himself; he purified his mind by dhyāna on Bhagavān Vishṇu and made another creation (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 3, Chapter 12).

The darkness and the knot. Devahūti tells her son Bhagavān Kapila that, by constantly pleasing the senses, she has fallen into the darkness of ajñāna, and that he is like a great eye that carries one across that darkness, risen like the Sun to give light to a world blinded by ajñāna (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 3, Chapter 25). Kapila answers that by jñāna the knot of ajñāna in the heart is untied, and from that comes ātma-sākshātkāra and moksha (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 3, Chapter 26).

Sorrow, honour and dishonour. Nārada Maharshi tells the child Dhruva that no outward circumstance or person causes a man sorrow: his own ajñāna is the cause. One who knows that he only experiences the fruit of his own prārabdha, and lives content, removes ajñāna and crosses saṃsāra (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 4, Chapter 8).

The ocean of ajñāna. The assembly tells Pṛthu Mahārāja that they had wandered in saṃsāra by the prārabdha karma called daiva, and that he has brought them to the far shore of the ocean of ajñāna (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 4, Chapter 21). Sanatkumāra teaches Pṛthu that the liṅga-śarīra imagined by ajñāna is burned away by jñāna; that through ajñāna a snake appears in a rope where there is none; and that one who wishes to cross the terrible ocean of ajñāna must never increase his attachment to saṃsāra, by which a man loses dharma, artha, kāma and moksha (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 4, Chapter 22).

Purañjana. In Nārada’s account of Purañjana, the yavana dragged Purañjana away, and Purañjana, covered by ajñāna, could not remember the friend who had done him good in the past, Avijñāta. Sunk in an ajñāna of endless extent, his mind polluted by attachment to his wife, he lost his memory and suffered for a long time (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 4, Chapter 28).

The chain of bondage. Bhagavān Ṛshabhadeva teaches his sons: as long as a man does not enquire into the Self, his true nature stays covered by ajñāna; as long as ajñāna remains, he cannot escape action; as long as there are actions, karma-vāsanās remain in the mind, and because of them he takes a body again and is bound. The knot of the heart has come through ajñāna; one who loosens it removes the ajñāna that causes saṃsāra and becomes a jīvanmukta. The direct fruit of mind, speech and the senses is to worship him, Ṛshabhadeva says; without that a man cannot escape the great delusion, the noose of Kāla that swallows everything (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 5, Chapter 5). Parīkshit names ajñāna (avidyā) first of the five kleśas of the mind: ajñāna, asmitā, rāga, dvesha and the fear of death (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 5, Chapter 6).

Citraketu. Aṅgiras and Nārada tell the grieving Citraketu that, as the single pot and the class “pot” are imagined in one clay, so in the one Paramātmā the division of body and embodied one has been imagined from beginningless time through ajñāna. Citraketu says he is sunk in ajñāna and tamoguṇa and asks them to light in him the lamp of jñāna; Aṅgiras answers that they have come to bless him, for a devotee of Purushottama should not lie in the darkness of ajñāna (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 6, Chapter 15).

The seed of ajñāna. Prahlāda teaches the daitya boys that the seed of all karmas is the lack of discernment of ātmā and anātmā, and that to destroy that seed called ajñāna is yoga. Of the thousands of means to destroy it, Bhagavān Vishṇu has told one: that by which prema for him arises. By such bhakti the seed of ajñāna and the vāsanās are burnt completely (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 7, Chapter 7).

In Gokula. Śuka tells Parīkshit that for those who always saw Śrī Kṛshṇa as their son, and whose milk flowed for him from love, the stream of birth and death that comes from ajñāna does not return (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapter 6). When Yaśodā looked into the open mouth of her son and saw the whole world, she saw at the root of the different forms of beings the jīva, his ajñāna, kāla, the karmas and the karma-vāsanās (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapter 8).

Śrī Kṛshṇa to Uddhava. The jīva, through ajñāna, identifies with the bodies that the three guṇas build, and is bound in saṃsāra. Knowledge is like fire churned from wood: the ācārya is the lower wood, the śishya the upper wood, the teaching the churning stick, and jñāna the fire. The root of saṃsāra is ajñāna alone; the knowledge that has destroyed it then merges in the ātmā like a fire without fuel (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 11, Chapter 10). “Jñāna and ajñāna, created by my māyā, are my beginningless śaktis, giving moksha and bondage to embodied beings. The jīva is my aṃśa; for him there is beginningless bondage through ajñāna, and moksha through jñāna” (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 11, Chapter 11). The modification of prakṛti as body, senses and mind is imagined by ajñāna, for it is not there at the beginning or the end and appears only in the middle (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 11, Chapter 19).

Related terms: Jñāna · Avidyā · Māyā · Saṃsāra · Ātmā · Moha · Tamas · Vāsanā

Sources

• Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 3, Chapters 12, 25–26; Skandha 4, Chapters 8, 21–22, 28; Skandha 5, Chapters 5–6; Skandha 6, Chapter 15; Skandha 7, Chapter 7; Skandha 10, Chapters 6, 8; Skandha 11, Chapters 10–11, 19