Even the Vedanta, although in a way the quintessence of Indian orthodoxy, is not a scholastic philosophy designed to support recognized dogma and ritual.  It is rather the orthodox method of soaring above these things.  It contemplates from a higher level the life of religious observances (which is the subject of the Purva Mimamsa) and recognizes its value as a preliminary, but yet rejects it as inadequate.  The Sannyasi or adept follows no caste observances, performs no sacrifices, reads no scriptures.  His religion is to realize in meditation the true nature, and it may be the identity, of the soul and God.  Good works are of no more importance for him than rites, though he does well to employ his time in teaching.  But Karma has ceased to exist for him:  “the acts of a Yogi are neither black nor white,” they have no moral quality nor consequences.  This is dangerous language and the doctrine has sometimes been abused.  But the point of the teaching is not that a Sannyasi may do what he likes but that he is perfectly emancipated from material bondage.  Most men are bound by their deeds; every new act brings consequences which attach the doer to the world of transmigration and create for him new existences.  But the deeds of the man who is really free have no such trammelling effects, for they are not prompted by desire nor directed to an object.  But since to become free he must have suppressed all desire, it is hardly conceivable that he should do anything which could be called a sin.  But this conviction that the task of the sage is not to perfect any form of good conduct but to rise above both good and evil, imparts to the Darsanas and even to the Upanishads a singularly non-ethical and detached tone.  The Yogi does no harm but he has less benevolence and active sympathy than the Buddhist monk.  It was a feeling that such an attitude has its dangers and is only for the few who have fought their way to the heights where it can safely be adopted, that led the Brahmans in all ages to lay stress on the householder’s life as the proper preparation for a philosophic old age.  Despite utterances to the contrary, they never as a body approved the ideal of a life entirely devoted to asceticism and not occupied with social duties during one period.  The extraordinary ease with which the higher phases of Indian thought shake off all formalities, social, religious and ethical, was counterbalanced by the multitudinous regulations devised to keep the majority in a law-abiding life.

None of the six Darsanas concern themselves with ethics.  The more important deal with the transcendental progress of sages who have avowedly abandoned the life of works, and even those which treat of that lower life are occupied with ritual and logic rather than with anything which can be termed moral science.  We must not infer that Indian literature is altogether unmoral.  The doctrine of Karma is intensely ethical and ethical discussions are more prominent in the Epics than in Homer, besides being the subject of much gnomic and didactic poetry.  But there is no mistaking the fact that the Hindu seeks for salvation by knowledge.  He feels the power of deeds, but it is only the lower happiness which lies in doing good works and enjoying their fruits.  The higher bliss consists in being entirely free from the bondage of deeds and Karma.