227 Paripaka is maturing or ripening

Paripāka (Maturing, Ripening)
Paripāka, having the sense of completion by maturing or ripening, is a feature of Śaṅkara’s Gītā presentation. The meaning is that similar, intense saṃskāra-s repeatedly laid down, finally come to dominate the causal or unmanifest basis of the mind. The word ‘maturing’ implies some passage of time, though it may be very short.

For instance, he says that the Sānkhya-buddhi or knowledge-mind comes about when the karma-yoga-buddhi or action-yoga-mind attains maturity:

11.49 Have recourse to the karma-yoga buddhi, or to the Sānkhya buddhi which is bom when that is mature (tat-paripāka-jāyām).

The Sānkhya-buddhi is only the rise of Knowledge. The Knowledge itself has to mature:

VII.19 The Knower who has attained mature Knowledge (prāpta-paripāka-jñānam).

Both detachment and meditation have also a process of maturing:

XVIII.37 The happiness born of the maturing of Knowledge, detachment, meditation and samādhi… is of sattva (jñāna-vairāgya-dhyāna-samādhi-paripāka-jam sukham … sāttvikam).

Another account of the rise of Knowledge is given in XIII. 11, in the commentary to the twentieth and final quality of those leading to Knowledge, namely tattva-jñāna-artha-darśanam, or Seeing-the-goal-of- Knowledge-of-truth, which goal is mokṣa.

XIII.11 Knowledge of truth (tattva-jñāna) results from maturity of creative meditation (bhāvanā-paripāka-nimitta) on Humility (amānitva) and the others (ādi) of the group up to the penultimate one, Constancy in Self-Knowledge (adhyātma-jñāna-nityatvam)

Elsewhere the process is referred to by different terms. In the comment on ‘strength of yoga’ (yoga-bala) under VIII.10, Śaṅkara says:

the strength of yoga is the fixity of mind arising from accumulation of samskāra-s produced by samādhi (samādhi-ja-saṁskāra- pracaya-janita-citta-sthairya-lakṣaṇa).

It is noteworthy that Bhāskara, perhaps a near contemporary, who in places of his own Gītā commentary reproduces Śaṅkara, gives this same phrase but without the word samādhi. It is an example of how he avoided the terms of Yoga which Śaṅkara used so plentifully.