Some Problems in Jaina Psychology

SR No.: 001260
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: Karnatak University Dharwar
Publication Year: 1961
Total Pages: 205
Language: English
Classification: Book_English & Philosophy
File Size: 13 MB

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SOME PROBLEMS IN JAINA PSYCHOLOGY
plasticity of the brain. However, retention is more mental. It is a samskāra which is more cognitive in nature, as Hemacandra stated. The brain cannot be the repository of past experience, as Mill and William James have said. Bain says that the faculty called memory is "almost exclusively found in the retentive power although sometimes aided by similarity." Thus, retention implies the power of preserving in the form of mental dispositions, past perception.
In this sense, the Jaina philosophers called dharaṇā a condition of recollection. Hemacandra mentions it as a condition of memory.4 In this sense also we can interpret the description of the three stages of retention given in the Nandisutra and the Tattvärthasutra Bhāṣya.5 The three stages describe stages in the development of memory.6 The first, perceptual experience, should continue to remain in the mind in some form. Without this, recollection would not be possible. Retention is also a condition of recall. The absence of lapse of experience is necessary for the revival of the experience at a later stage. In the analysis of dhāraṇā in the second stage, the cognition formed by avaya is retained. This later leads to recognition. Jinabhadra describes the three stages of dharaṇā as (i) the absence of lapse of perception, (ii) the formation of a mental trace, and (iii) the recollection of the cognition on future occasions. Hemacandra points out that perceptual judgment, when protracted for some time, would become retention; and that is the absence of the lapse of perception. But the absence of the lapse of perception is also a condition of recall, because without the absence of the lapse there would be no mental trace and there would be no recollection. Retention, then, is not memory itself although it is a necessary condition of memory, because recollection would not be possible without retention. Formation of a mental trace is an important factor in retention. We have seen that Hemacandra showed that, in a sense, retention can be described as a mental trace, a samskāra. It is a continued existence of a cognition for a definite or indefinite length of time. He says that the mental trace, or saṁskāra, is cognitive in character. It is a species of cognition. The mental trace, or samskära, may be compared to the mental disposition of the modern psychologists. Some of these give a physiological picture of the mental disposition. They say that past experiences are retained in the form of physiological dispositions. They are not mental traces or mental dispositions. They are only structural modifications of the brain. They are unconscious cerebrations. In this sense, retention would become
3 Bain (A.): The Sense and the Intellect: The Intellect (3), as quoted by Rand in Classical Psychology, p. 486.
4 Pramanamimämsä, I. 1, 29.
5 Nandisutra, 35; Tattvärthasutra Bhāṣya, I. 15.
6 Mehta (M.): Jaina Psychology, p. 82. He describes the psychological process of retention.