Mokṣa-Dharma: The Path to Liberation

Mokṣa means liberation: freedom from saṃsāra, the endless cycle of birth and death. The last two chapters (48–49) of the Dharma Khaṇḍa of the Garuḍa Mahā Purāṇa give the final teaching of the whole Preta Kalpa, the section on what happens after death. Before this, the text describes in great detail the suffering of the preta (the newly departed soul), the terrors of the Yama-mārga (the road to Yama’s realm), the pains of naraka (the realms of suffering), and how nothing in this changing world lasts.

Then Bhagavān Viṣṇu turns to Garuḍa with the hopeful teaching of mokṣa-dharma. It explains the true nature of the jīva (individual soul), the nature of saṃsāra, the way out of the cycle, and the highest goal of human birth.

The Jīva as a Part of Brahman

The teaching begins by declaring that the jīva is, in its true nature, an aṃśa (a part, portion or ray) of the Supreme Brahman. Here Brahman is identified with Śiva and Viṣṇu as the one reality without a second. Being a part does not mean that the jīva, while caught in saṃsāra, is the same as Brahman. Think of a spark: it is part of the fire, yet it is still a separate spark. In the same way the jīva truly is a portion of Brahman, while for now it appears as a separate, bound being.

The jīva is bound because it is wrapped in the sūkṣma-śarīra (subtle body). This subtle body is made of the five tanmātras (subtle elements), the five jñānendriyas (senses of knowing), the five karmendriyas (organs of action), and the manas, buddhi, ahaṃkāra and citta (the mind, intellect, sense of “I”, and memory). It carries all the saṃskāras (deep impressions) gathered over countless past lives, and it is the vehicle in which the jīva passes from one birth to the next. The subtle body is not the self. It is the garment the self wears on the long journey of saṃsāra.

The Eighty-Four Lakh Yonis

Before the jīva reaches human birth, it passes through 84 lakh (8.4 million) yonis, or kinds of birth. This number stands for every possible form of life, from the simplest plant to the most developed animal. They are spread across:

Sthāvara (beings that cannot move): rocks, plants and trees, making up most of the lower yonis
Jalaja (water-born): fish and water creatures of every kind
Kīṭa (insects and worms): all small creatures
Pakṣī (birds): the beings of the air
Paśu (animals): land animals, growing more complex step by step
Manuṣya (human): the highest form in this series

The Dharma Khaṇḍa teaches that each birth in a lower yoni uses up some karma and develops some part of awareness. The fish learns movement and direction. The animal learns to live in a group. The bird learns to reach for the heights. Each yoni is both a cleansing and a lesson.

Human birth comes at the end of this huge journey. It is not the beginning but the fruit of millions of rounds of experience. To waste a human life only on the pleasures of the senses is therefore not just unlucky but deeply foolish. It is like a student who has finished twelve years of hard schooling, reached the gates of the university, and then turned round to play in the dirt.

Human Birth as the Staircase to Mokṣa

The Dharma Khaṇḍa calls human birth mokṣa-sopāna, “the staircase to liberation”. The key verse says:

Labdhvā sudurlabham idaṃ bahu-sambhavānte mānuṣyam arthadam anityam apīha dhīraḥ / tūrṇaṃ yateta na pated anumṛtyu yāvan niḥśreyasāya viṣayaḥ khalu sarvataḥ syāt
“Having gained, after many births, this rare human life, which can bring the highest good though it does not last, the wise person should strive quickly, before death comes again. For the pleasures of the senses are found in every kind of birth.”

The point is not that human birth is a goal in itself. It is the only birth in which tattva-vicāra (telling the real from the unreal) is possible. Animals cannot perform yajña (fire offering). Rocks cannot recite mantra. Fish cannot practise vairāgya (detachment). Only a human jīva has all the tools needed for mokṣa: śravaṇa (hearing the teaching), manana (thinking it over) and nididhyāsana (meditating on it).

Teachings on Impermanence

The closing chapter of the Dharma Khaṇḍa contains a striking series of ślokas (verses) on impermanence. Each gives a vivid picture of how everything in this changing world passes away:

“As a bubble on water forms and bursts in a moment, so is human life: seen for an instant, then gone.”
“Like a flame in the wind, like dew at dawn, like the tide of a river that rises and falls: such is the life of every changing being.”
“The body you have dressed in clothes and jewels will become food for worms. The wealth you gathered with such effort will be shared out by strangers. The family you built will scatter like seeds in the wind. What, then, is truly yours?”
“The king who ruled in splendour yesterday is a preta today. The merchant who counted gold this morning has no hands to count with by evening. The young man who mocked old age is old before he has finished mocking.”

These pictures are not meant to cause despair. They are meant to awaken viveka (discernment): the understanding that one’s attention and effort should be given to what lasts (sat) rather than to what passes (asat).

Tattva-Jñāna: True Knowledge

The highest teaching at the end of the Dharma Khaṇḍa is tattva-jñāna, the direct knowledge of reality:

The Real (Sat): Brahman alone is real. It is unborn, unchanging, everywhere, shining by its own light, and beyond the reach of words and ideas.

The Unreal (Asat): The whole world of nāma-rūpa (name and form), including the body, the mind, relationships and everything we experience, comes and goes. So it does not have final reality.

The Jīva: The jīva, in its true nature as a part of Brahman, is real. But the jīva’s belief that it is the body and mind (“I am this body, these relationships, this history”) is the root of saṃsāra.

Liberation (Mokṣa): The jīva may come to know its oneness with Brahman through the grace of a guru, through sincere bhakti (loving devotion), and through the practice of tattva-vicāra. Then the gathered saṃskāras dissolve, the subtle body no longer binds, and the jīva rests in its own nature as Brahman. This is mokṣa. The jīva does not go somewhere new; it recognises what it always was.

The Place of Bhakti

The Dharma Khaṇḍa uses the language of both jñāna (knowledge) and karma-kāṇḍa (Vedic rites) throughout. But its final teaching leans toward a joining of bhakti and Vedānta: the most direct path to mokṣa is bhakti to Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa. Such bhakti:

Loosens the hold of the ego naturally, through love rather than hard austerity
Calls down Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa’s grace, which adds to and goes beyond a person’s own limited power to discern
Makes sure that at the moment of death, the crucial turning point, the name of Hari is present, turning the departing jīva onto the devayāna (the bright path of the devas)

The teaching ends with Bhagavān Viṣṇu’s promise to Garuḍa: “Those who hear this Dharma Khaṇḍa with understanding will not return to the cycle of birth and death after finishing the karma of their present life. Hearing this teaching is itself a form of bhakti.” This shows the whole Preta Kalpa, with all its fearful accounts of the preta’s suffering, of naraka and of Yama’s judgment, to be in the end a work of liberation. Its purpose is to turn the listener’s heart toward what lasts.

Ātyantika Laya as Mokṣa in the Viṣṇu Mahā Purāṇa

Chapter 5 of the Ṣaṣṭhāṃśa (sixth part) of the Viṣṇu Mahā Purāṇa gives a detailed and vivid account of why liberation is the only true refuge. It starts from the three tāpas (kinds of suffering) and shows the way through them to ātyantika laya: the complete and permanent ending of the jīva’s seeming separateness.

The Three Tāpas

Parāśara Ṛṣi teaches that seeing the tāpatraya, the three kinds of suffering, gives rise to vairāgya (detachment). Vairāgya leads to jñāna (knowledge), and jñāna leads to mokṣa. The three are:

Ādhyātmika (arising from within oneself): illnesses of the body (fevers, śūla, gulma, skin diseases and many others) and troubles of the mind (kāma, śoka, asūyā, avamāna, īrṣyā, mātsarya: desire, grief, envy, humiliation, jealousy and spite).

Ādhibhautika (arising from other beings): the harm and trouble caused by animals, birds, humans, piśācas, serpents and rākṣasas.

Ādhidaivika (arising from nature and fate): suffering from cold, wind, heat, rain, lightning and all the forces of nature.

Garbha-Duḥkha: The Suffering of the Womb

The Purāṇa paints one of its most vivid pictures of the pain of saṃsāra in its account of garbha-duḥkha, the suffering in the womb. The jīva enters a womb in a body that is extremely tender and sensitive. It is shut inside the belly, wrapped in a membrane, and pressed together with its spine, neck and bones bent. It is tormented by the very sour, sharp and hot food the mother eats, which causes it great pain. It cannot stretch or bend its limbs freely. It lies in a pool of urine, filth, blood and other waste, bitten by tiny creatures it cannot drive away, breathing with great difficulty, and aware through all of this. It remembers many past births and the karma that has brought it here.

At birth the jīva comes out with its face smeared with urine, filth, blood and fluids. It is squeezed by the winds of birth and comes out head-down in agony, falling to the earth in a daze. Struck by the outside air, it loses awareness. Once born, it cannot move, cannot brush away the insects and ants that bite it, lies in wet and dirty wrappings, gets food only when others choose, and suffers all the ādhibhautika troubles of infancy, completely helpless.

Old age brings its own list of troubles. The body’s strength is gone. The hair turns grey. The eyes grow weak and sink inward. Hair grows from the nose and ears. The neck trembles, every bone stands out, and the back is bent. The digestive fire is gone, so there is little appetite and little strength to act. Rising, sitting and lying down are all hard. Every sense fails. Saliva gathers at the mouth. One depends on servants, children and a spouse who themselves grow impatient, and one remembers the past with longing and regret.

At death the limbs and neck go limp. Clear moments and confusion come and go. There is the pain of Yama’s messengers binding the soul with ropes and beating it with sticks, the terrifying sight of the Yamadūtas, and the agony of the yātanā body (the body made for suffering) as it enters the realm of naraka.

In naraka there is being tied with nooses, struck with clubs, cut with saws, crushed with pestles, split with axes and buried alive, sufferings too many to list. Even in svarga (the realm of joy) there is the constant fear of falling, since the merit that brought one there will one day run out. No state that depends on conditions, however high, is a true refuge.

Parā and Aparā Vidyā

The Purāṇa then quotes the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad, a text of the Atharva Veda, to set out the two kinds of knowledge (vidyā):

Aparā vidyā (lower knowledge): the Ṛg, Yajur, Sāma and Atharva Vedas, with all their supporting branches (śikṣā, kalpa, vyākaraṇa, nirukta, chandas and jyotiṣa, that is, pronunciation, ritual, grammar, word meaning, metre and astronomy). This whole body of Vedic ritual knowledge is aparā vidyā. It is the path of action and merit, and it brings good things that do not last.

Parā vidyā (higher knowledge): the knowledge that reveals the imperishable Brahman. Its object, Parabrahman, is avyakta (unmanifest), ajara (never ageing), acintya (beyond thought), avyaya (never used up), anirdeśya (beyond description) and arūpa (without form). It has no hands or feet. It is sarvagata (everywhere), satya (true), bhūtayoni (the source of all beings) and vyāpya (both filling all and filled). This highest reality is seen directly only by the śūra, the spiritually brave.

That highest reality (parā-tattva) is Bhagavān Viṣṇu himself.

What “Bhagavān” Means

The chapter ends with the Purāṇa’s most exact definition of Bhagavān Vāsudeva. He is the one who knows the arising and the ending of all beings, their coming and going, their bondage and their freedom: both vidyā (knowledge) and avidyā (ignorance). He is free of every heya guṇa (unwanted quality). He has the six divine qualities: jñāna (knowledge), śakti (power), bala (strength), aiśvarya (sovereignty), vīrya (valour) and tejas (splendour). That supreme reality, the Paramātmā in whom all beings arise and into whom all return, is Vāsudeva.

Sources

Garuḍa Mahā Purāṇa, Dharma Khaṇḍa, Chapters 48–49
Viṣṇu Mahā Purāṇa, Ṣaṣṭhāṃśa (Book 6), Chapter 5