The six darshanas

How can we attain the right knowledge that ends suffering, and how can true knowledge be distinguished from error?

What is the true structure of reality, knowledge of which leads to the highest good?

How can the threefold suffering — from oneself, from other beings and from natural or divine forces — be ended permanently, beyond the temporary relief of ordinary or ritual remedies?

How can the suffering that arises from the mind's entanglement with the world be ended by stilling the mind itself?

What is dharma, and how can one know with certainty what one ought to do, especially in ritual?

How can a person know Brahman, the ultimate reality taught in the Upanishads, and so be freed from rebirth?

A plurality of real entities, organised (with Vaisheshika) into categories such as substance, quality and action; many eternal selves; atoms; and God as an efficient cause.

The categories: substance (nine kinds, including atoms, space, time, selves and minds), quality, action, universal, particularity, inherence, and later absence.

Two eternal realities: many purushas (pure conscious subjects) and one prakriti (unconscious primordial nature), with its twenty-three evolutes. Effects pre-exist in their cause (satkaryavada).

Like Sankhya: many purushas and one prakriti with its evolutes; in addition, Ishvara, a special purusha forever free.

A real, plural world; eternal selves; the eternal Veda and eternal word-meaning relations. No creator God is required.

All schools accept Brahman as ultimately real. They differ on the status of the world and individual selves: appearance (Advaita), real modes of Brahman (Vishishtadvaita), or real and distinct (Dvaita).

Four: perception (pratyaksha), inference (anumana), comparison or analogy (upamana) and testimony (shabda). The validity of knowledge is established by external checks (paratah pramanya).

Two: perception and inference; testimony and other means are treated as forms of inference. (Later syncretic Nyaya-Vaisheshika accepted Nyaya's four.)

Three: perception (pratyaksha), inference (anumana) and reliable testimony (aptavachana).

Three: perception, inference and testimony (agama).

Kumarila (Bhatta school) accepts six: perception, inference, comparison, testimony, postulation (arthapatti) and non-apprehension (anupalabdhi); Prabhakara accepts five, rejecting non-apprehension. Knowledge is intrinsically valid (svatah pramanya) unless defeated.

Commonly perception (pratyaksha), inference (anumana) and testimony (shabda), with scripture as decisive about Brahman; Advaita, following Mimamsa, accepts six pramanas.

The self is an eternal, all-pervading substance, distinct from body, senses and mind; consciousness, pleasure and pain are qualities it acquires only in connection with a mind.

The self is an eternal, all-pervading substance, the substrate of qualities such as cognition, desire and effort, which arise through contact with a mind.

The Self is purusha: pure, inactive, unchanging witness-consciousness, distinct from mind, intellect and ego, which belong to prakriti.

The Self is purusha, the seer: pure consciousness that only appears to be coloured by the mind's fluctuations.

The self is an eternal, real substance, the agent of ritual action and enjoyer of its fruits, distinct from the body; the schools differ on how it is known.

The atman or jiva: identical with Brahman in Advaita; an eternal, dependent part or mode of Brahman in Vishishtadvaita; eternally distinct from and dependent on God in Dvaita.

False knowledge (mithya-jnana), which produces faults such as desire and aversion, which produce activity, birth and suffering — a chain set out in the Nyaya Sutras.

Ignorance of the true nature of the categories, leading to desire, action and the accumulation of merit and demerit (adrishta) that binds the self to rebirth.

Non-discrimination (aviveka) between purusha and prakriti, as a result of which the qualities and activities of the intellect are attributed to consciousness.

Five afflictions (kleshas): ignorance (avidya), I-am-ness (asmita), attraction, aversion and clinging to life, of which ignorance is the root; they drive karma and its fruits.

Action motivated by desire, including prohibited actions, which binds the self to embodiment; in earlier Mimamsa the focus is on performing dharma rather than on bondage.

Ignorance (avidya) about the Self and its relation to Brahman, together with karma, binds the self to rebirth. Schools differ on whether ignorance is a cosmic principle or the soul's contraction of knowledge.

Apavarga: absolute freedom from suffering, in which the self exists without pain — and, on the classical view, without consciousness or pleasure.

The cessation of the self's specific qualities, including pain, so that it is no longer embodied.

Kaivalya: the isolation of purusha from prakriti, in which prakriti ceases to act for that purusha and suffering ends permanently.

Kaivalya: the seer abides in its own nature, isolated from the play of the gunas, when the mind's fluctuations have been fully stilled.

Earlier, heaven (svarga) as the fruit of ritual; later Mimamsakas describe liberation as the cessation of embodiment through exhausting karma.

Freedom from rebirth: realisation of identity with Brahman (Advaita), or eternal blissful service and communion with God in his realm (Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita).

Right knowledge of the categories of reality, gained through the pramanas and disciplined reasoning, supported by ethical discipline and meditation.

True knowledge of the categories, together with the practice of dharma, which the Sutras say leads to prosperity and the highest good.

Discriminating knowledge (viveka-khyati) of the twenty-five principles, cultivated through study and reflection.

Practice (abhyasa) and dispassion (vairagya); the eight limbs from ethical restraint to samadhi; and devotion to Ishvara (ishvara-pranidhana).

Performance of obligatory and occasional duties enjoined by the Veda, avoidance of prohibited acts, and (for liberation) abstention from desire-motivated acts.

Study of scripture, reflection and meditation, ethical discipline, devotion and, in theistic schools, God's grace. The relative weight of knowledge and devotion is a key point of difference.