---
type: Concept
bundle: sankhya-darshana
bundle_version: 0.13.2
id: prakriti
title: Prakṛti
iast: Prakṛti
devanagari: प्रकृति
description: Primordial, unconscious, ever-active matter/nature -- the sole material cause of the entire manifest world, NOT 'Nature' in a modern ecological sense, and NOT the same prakriti already gestured at in dharma-foundation (v0.1) as a loose synonym for 'nature'; here it is a precise metaphysical category with two named phases, avyakta (unmanifest) and vyakta (manifest).
darshana:
- Samkhya
tags:
- prakriti
- matter
- samkhya
- dualism
- cause
not:
- term: '''Nature'' in the ecological or romantic sense'
  why: 'Modern English ''nature'' suggests trees, weather, the outdoors. Prakriti is a technical metaphysical category: the single unconscious material principle, in dynamic equilibrium of its three gunas, from which everything non-purusha -- mind, senses, elements -- evolves. It is closer to ''primordial matter-energy'' than to a landscape.'
  instead: Define prakriti as the unconscious, ever-active material substratum whose disturbed guna-equilibrium is the sole cause of cosmic and psychological manifestation.
- term: a generic background sense of 'nature' (dharma-foundation v0.1)
  why: 'Where prakriti appears informally elsewhere in the corpus as shorthand for ''the natural order,'' this file is the doctrinal anchor: prakriti here names a specific, arguably the central, Samkhya category with an exact structure (avyakta/vyakta, triguna equilibrium, sole material cause), not a loose gesture.'
- term: matter (in the Western mind-matter dichotomy)
  why: "Prakriti's evolutes include buddhi, ahankara, and manas (Samkhya-Karika 22), so mind itself is prakriti. Rendering prakriti as 'matter' imports a dichotomy the school does not draw; Samkhya's line runs between consciousness (purusha) and everything else, mind included."
  instead: "Keep prakriti untranslated; gloss as the unconscious pole of the dualism, comprising both the material and the mental"
related:
- /concepts/purusha.md
- /concepts/vyakta-avyakta.md
- /concepts/guna-samkhya.md
- /concepts/satkaryavada.md
- /concepts/parinamavada.md
timestamp: '2026-07-10'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Prakṛti -- प्रकृति

**Not:** 'Nature' in the ecological or romantic sense, a generic background sense of 'nature' (dharma-foundation v0.1), matter (in the Western mind-matter dichotomy)

## What It Actually Means

Prakṛti is unconscious, ever-active, and self-sufficient as a material cause: it requires no external agent to begin evolving, only a disturbance in the equilibrium of its three guṇas (sattva, rajas, tamas). From prakṛti, by its own internal logic, evolves the entire apparatus of mind and world -- buddhi, ahaṃkāra, manas, the senses, the elements -- everything, that is, except puruṣa. Prakṛti itself has two phases: avyakta, the unmanifest root-state in perfect guṇa-equilibrium, and vyakta, the manifest, differentiated world that results once that equilibrium is disturbed by proximity to puruṣa.

## Audience Metaphor

Prakṛti is like a vast reservoir of raw material and instructions compressed into a single seed-state (avyakta), which unpacks into an entire running system (vyakta) once triggered -- not because anyone flips a switch, but because the seed's own internal tension resolves once conditions allow it to.

## Citations

1. Samkhya-Karika 3, 10-11, 22 -- see [references/samkhya-karika.md](../references/samkhya-karika.md)
2. Samkhya-Tattva-Kaumudi (Vachaspati Mishra, commentary on Karika 3) -- see [references/samkhya-tattva-kaumudi.md](../references/samkhya-tattva-kaumudi.md)
