Self, Well-being, and Agency in the Caraka Saṃhitā

In this study, we examine three different conceptions of self within the Caraka Saṃhitā (CS), a classical Sanskrit Āyurveda text, based on three interrelated notions of suffering, well-being, and the nature of the self’s agentic pursuit of remedy. These are—(i) the phenomenal self, (ii) the expansive self, and (iii) the transcendental self. The phenomenal self-in-the-world encompasses its existence across a single lifetime, and as the embodied, agentic self of the ‘sufferer in the here-and-now’, it is the primary subject of the CS. The temporally expansive self is conceived of in relation to the self’s experiences of disease, illness, and well-being as a result of karmic consequence and is therefore expansive (extends beyond the temporal bounds of a single lifetime). It experiences multiple embodied phenomenal subjectivities across an iterative temporal continuum. The ‘transcendental self’, although also temporally expansive, is the unchanging, eternal core of all ‘being’, the seer of all actions, the ‘knowing’ of which is ultimate well-being, and as such, implies the cessation of karmic valence.