Jaina Philosophy

SR No.: 001180
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Mohanlal Mehta
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
Publication Year: 1998
Total Pages: 328
Language: English
Classification: Book_English & Philosophy
File Size: 15 MB

Page 75

62
JAINA PHILOSOPHY: AN INTRODUCTION
remains unchanged. Kundakunda also defines reality (sattā) in the same way.
Identity and Difference :
What the Jaina maintains is that the nature of reals can be understood from experience. It is wrong to admit that any attribute or element that does not belong to the real can be ascribed as belonging to it. This is the fundamental position of almost all the Realistic schools.
Our experience tells us that no object is absolutely identical. We experience this also that the differences are not absolutely scattered. Jainism takes this commonsense-view and maintains that the identity is accepted to be true in the midst of all the varying modes or differences. There is no reason to call in question the reality of the changes or of the identity, as both are perceived facts. Every entity is subject to change and maintains its identity throughout its career. Dispassionate study reveals reality to be a synthesis of opposites - identity and difference, permanence and change, describability and indescribability, oneness and maniness. The Vedantins start with the premise that reality is One Universal Existence and that is Permanent Consciousness. The Vaibhāṣikas and Sautrāntikas believe in atomic particulars and momentary ideas, each absolutely different from the rest and having nothing underlying them to bind them together. The Naiyāyikas believe in both as combined in an individual, though they maintain that the two characters, i.e., universality and particularity are different and distinct. A real, according to them, is an aggregate of the universal and the particular, i.e., identity and difference and not a real synthesis. The Jaina differs from them all and maintains that the universal and the particular are only distinguishable traits in a real, which is at once identical with and different from both. Reality is neither a particularity nor a universality in an exclusive
1. Pancastikāyasāra. 8.