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　　 A proper conception of the criteria of modernity, or of what is relevant for the modern man, can only be derived from an adequate theory or conception of man. Man seeks awareness of whatever is life-enriching and life-enhancing; further, he seeks to adjust his affective or emotional altitudes in the light of his total awareness. Modern man has shed off inhibitions imposed by older religions; to him enrichment of consciousness has become as important a value as salvation of the soul. In fact, modern thinkers prefer to talk of fulfill­ment or perfection of human life here on earth rather than of salvation or liberation in another world. On the other hand, the breakdown of the religious . world-view and its replacement by the chilly, mechanistic world-view of modern physics and astronomy, has made him turn his mind to major cultural traditions, past and present, spiritual and secular, throughout the world, in the hope of finding a more acceptable synthesis of the values of life—a wisdom for living that both science and affluence have failed to provide him with. Speaking generally, anything in a past tradition that can—either by presenting before him materials for contemplation that are insufficiently noticed by modern investigators, or by acquainting him with diversity of attitudes toward life and its values characteristic of the better, maturer historical societies—contribute to the sharpening and enhancement of modern man's awareness or to the promotion of his adjustment to a universe uncontrolled by spiritual forces is relevant and meaningful to him.

  A third criterion of contemporary relevance of the traditional is its capacity to strengthen the attitudes embedded in the discovery of new sources of enjoyment, amusement, and happiness in our time. This last consideration accounts for the fascination felt by modern intelligentsia. East and West, for the culture of the Kāmasūtra and the cult of Yoga, viewed as a system of health-giving, or rejuvenating, exercises. Yoga as a system of meditation, too, has its votaries among the moderns afflicted by conflicts and worries generated by our restless times. It is interesting to note that the teachers and propagators of transcendental meditation are attracting more disciples in the affluent societies of the West than in their homeland. Have the more austere forms and phases of Indian ethicoreligious and logico-epistemological thought any such significance for the modern man, Eastern and/or Western? The remainder of this article is written with the belief that this last question admits, at least partly, an affirmative answer.

Ⅲ

The most important distinction which the ancients failed to make and which is almost obvious to us is that between science and philosophy. We no more believe that philosophers are competent to speculate fruitfully about the origin of the physical universe and the nature of the elements or forces making it up, The physical sciences, for example, physics and astronomy, are inclined to treat the physical world as autonomous and self-sufficient, thus discouraging

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speculations about a creator God. These sciences have rendered obsolete such speculative theories about the creation and constitution of the physical world as the atomism of the Jainas, the Nyāya-Vaiśesika (and Democritus), and the dualistic cosmology of the Sāṁkhyas. Quite a few older philosophers believed that their main business was to investigate the nature of ultimate reality, as distinguished from the appearances. Modem science, which has long since learned to distinguish between primary and secondary qualities, or the mathematical (measurable) and nonmathematical characteristics of nature, would  hardly concede that claim to the philosopher.

　　 Another factor detrimental to the claims of philosophical ontology has appeared within philosophy itself, namely, the positivistic insistence on verifiably meaningful or empirically testable utterance. No statements about the origin of the universe or the characterization of an Ultimate Reality, such as have been made by some of the greatest historical philosophers, seem to be meaningful in ways acceptable to the positivist or the scientific mind. Nor does there seem to be any method by which the rival theories regarding the nature of Ultimate Reality advanced by, say, the Advaita Vedanta, KasmīraŚaivism, Rāmānuja, Nimbārka, Vallabha. Spinoza, Bradley, and others may be adjudged as to their relative validity.

　　  It is by sheer habit, generated by years of conditioning, that we continue to talk about an Absolute as the reality behind the visible, phenomenal world. If the Absolute is wholly different from the world of phenomena, it, in no sense, can explain that world and so becomes useless and redundant as an explanatory principle. On the other hand, if the Absolute is a factor within the world, it should be accessible to us in some manner in our experience. Judged in this light the Advaitic Brahman, which is identical with our own self, is so accessible in experience, but the Absolute in other systems is not. Although the Mādhyamika identifies nirvāna with saṁsāra, he does so in a general way and fails to specify the mode of life and experience through which the śūnya may be reached.