Perception (Pratyakṣa)
The eye meets color, the ear meets sound — the most basic knowing, and the one everyone trusts first.
Pratyakṣa is direct perception — the knowledge that arises when a sense meets its object, the eye seeing color or the ear hearing sound. Every Indian school accepts it as the first and most immediate means of valid knowledge, the bedrock on which the others build. But agreeing that we perceive did not end the debate; it began it. How sense-contact yields knowledge, whether perception is ever free of conceptual construction, and whether yogic perception can reach what the ordinary senses cannot, became central and hard-fought questions across the darśanas and in the long argument with the Buddhist epistemologists.
How it traveled
- UpadeśasāhasrīKālaḍi (Kaladi) · 710explains
- Tarka-saṃgrahaTelugu country (Andhra region); active in Varanasi · 1650explains
Key passages(16)
Vivekacūḍāmaṇi · Śaṅkara (traditionally ascribed; authorship doubted)
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad · Vedic Revelation (śruti)
'The eye is one Graha, and that is seized by form as the Atigraha, for with the eye one sees forms.'
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'When one perceives, then one understands. One who does not perceive, does not understand. Only he who perceives, understands. This perception, however, we must desire to understand.' 'Sir, I desire t
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Vivekacūḍāmaṇi · Śaṅkara (traditionally ascribed; authorship doubted)
His form is not to be seen, no one beholds him with the eye. He is imagined by the heart, by wisdom, by the mind. Those who know this, are immortal.
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