The Six Darshanas

Darshana comes from the Sanskrit root drish, 'to see'. The same word is used for the darshan a devotee seeks at a temple. Applied to philosophy, a darshana is a way of seeing reality: a complete view that explains what exists, how we can know it, and how a human being can reach freedom from suffering.

Indian tradition groups the schools that accept the authority of the Vedas as astika ('orthodox'), and those that do not, such as Buddhism, Jainism and the materialist Charvaka, as nastika. The six astika darshanas became the classical framework of Hindu thought. Each is built around a root text of short aphorisms (sutras), which later teachers explained in long commentaries (bhashyas) and sub-commentaries.

The six are often presented in three pairs, because the members of each pair share a great deal: Nyaya with Vaisheshika, Samkhya with Yoga, and Mimamsa with Vedanta. They are best seen not as rival sects but as different lenses. A traditional student might study Nyaya for its logic, Samkhya for its map of nature and mind, and Vedanta for its teaching on the self.

Here is each darshana with its root text and core idea. Dates for the sutra texts are uncertain; scholars place most of them, in the forms we have, in the last centuries BCE and the early centuries CE, though their ideas are older.

A question every darshana must answer is: how do we know anything? The answer is given as a list of pramanas, the valid means of knowledge. Vaisheshika accepts two, perception (pratyaksha) and inference (anumana). Samkhya and Yoga add reliable testimony (shabda), which includes the Vedas. Nyaya adds comparison (upamana), making four. Mimamsa and Vedanta accept five or six, adding postulation (arthapatti) and, in some sub-schools, non-perception (anupalabdhi).

This careful attention to how we know, before saying what we know, is one of the great contributions of Indian philosophy. Nyaya's analysis of inference, with its five-step argument, shaped debate across every Indian school, including Buddhist and Jain ones.

Of the six, Yoga is the one most of the world has heard of, though usually as postures alone. In Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, posture (asana) is just one of eight limbs. The second sutra defines the goal itself, and a later sutra lists the eight limbs: ethical restraints, observances, posture, breath regulation, withdrawal of the senses, concentration, meditation and absorption.

Vedanta, 'the end (or culmination) of the Veda', grew into the most influential darshana in living Hindu practice. Its root text, the Brahma Sutras of Badarayana, opens with the words below, and every major Vedanta teacher wrote a commentary on it. The schools agree that Brahman is the ultimate reality and the source of the world. They differ on how the individual self (jiva) and the world relate to Brahman.

Advaita ('non-dual'), systematised by Adi Shankaracharya, traditionally dated to the 8th century, teaches that Brahman alone is ultimately real and the individual self is not different from it. The world of many things is maya, an appearance that is real in experience but not ultimately. Liberation comes through knowledge (jnana) that dissolves the ignorance which makes us feel separate. The phrase 'brahma satyam jagan mithya, jivo brahmaiva naparah' ('Brahman is real, the world is appearance, the self is none other than Brahman') sums up the school.

Vishishtadvaita ('non-duality of the qualified whole') was taught by Ramanujacharya, traditionally c. 1017–1137 (some scholars suggest c. 1077–1157). Brahman, identified with Vishnu-Narayana, is the inner self of all; individual souls and the material world are real and form Brahman's 'body', as a body belongs to its soul. Liberation comes through bhakti and surrender (prapatti) and the grace of God, and the liberated soul enjoys eternal communion with the Lord without losing its identity.

Dvaita ('duality') was founded by Madhvacharya (1238–1317), who called it tattvavada, 'the realist view'. It holds a five-fold difference: between God and souls, God and matter, soul and soul, soul and matter, and between material things. Vishnu is supreme and independent; souls and matter depend on him eternally. Liberation is by Vishnu's grace, reached through devotion.

Other Vedanta traditions include Dvaitadvaita (Nimbarka), Shuddhadvaita (Vallabhacharya) and Achintya Bheda-Abheda (the Gaudiya tradition of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu). Each has its own sampradaya of teachers and devotees, and each is honoured by its followers as a faithful reading of the Upanishads.

The six darshanas are not museum pieces. Their vocabulary runs through everyday Hindu life: the three gunas of Samkhya appear in the Bhagavad Gita and in Ayurveda; Yoga's eight limbs are practised worldwide; Mimamsa's rules shaped how dharma texts are read; and the great Vedanta acharyas founded monasteries and sampradayas that continue today, from the Shankara mathas to the Sri Vaishnava and Madhva traditions.

The darshanas also model a habit of respectful debate. Commentators routinely set out an opponent's view at length (the purvapaksha) before answering it, and the schools sharpened one another over centuries. For a seeker today they offer different doors into the same search for truth.