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The Vedanta Sutras of Badarayana, Commentary by Sankara (SBE38), tr. by George Thibaut [1896] at sacred-texts.com


15. Some also by proceeding according to their liking (evince their disregard of anything but knowledge).

Moreover some who know, having obtained the intuition of the fruit of knowledge, express, in reliance thereon, the purposelessness of the means of all other results, viz. by proceeding according to their liking (and abandoning those means). A scriptural text of the Vâgasaneyins runs as follows: 'Knowing this the people of old did not wish for offspring. What shall we do with offspring, they said, we who have this Self and this world' (Bri. Up. IV, 4, 22). And that the fruit of knowledge, being present to intuition, does not manifest itself at a later time only as the fruits of actions do, we have explained more than once. From this also it follows that knowledge is not subordinate to action, and that the scriptural statements as to the fruit of knowledge cannot be taken in any but their true sense.


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