Jaina Concept of Omniscience

SR No.: 001547
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Ramjee Singh
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1974
Total Pages: 258
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, & Knowledge
File Size: 17 MB

Page 151

138: METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE
mental traditional beliefs of Jainism like those in non-absolutism (anekānta-vāda or syâdvāda), soul and non--soul (jiva-ajīva), karma, omniscience (sarvajñatya), etc. They are realists and also dualists. According to them jīva and ajīva are two inde. pendent realities, which cannot be reduced to each other. They do hold that mind and matter both cooperate in producing knowledge but would not agree with Kant, Dinnāga and Dharmakirti that 'understanding maketh nature'. Mind is simply the instrument of discovery like our sense organs. Any respect to reason does not imply the denial of the facts of experience In fact, the infinite number of attributes and modes possessed by reality are discovered ty our experience alone. This experience tells us that the reality is a developing process. It cannot be explained either in terms of being or becoming, identity or difference. The former fails to explain change, the latter the basis of change. Hence, the best way is to regard reality as being-in-becoming, identity-in-difference, reality-in-process. This they explain through the triple process of orgination, decay and permanence.9
They accept both substance, or the principle of being and modes, the principle of becoming as necessary. Attributes exist in substances, depend upon them and are never without them. They cannot be the substratum of another attribute3 although many attributes can co-exist in one and the same substance at one and the same time and place. The change or becoming of substance is called modification, which is a change in the character or its attributes. 4 So, this is not an unreal world but a thoroughly real world with the characteristic of being or is. ness as essential to it.5 Jivas are also substances and the differentium of soul is consciousness (upayoga),? which is also its essance. There cannot be soul without consciousness or vice -versa. The two are coeval with each other. Behind all mental
2 Umāsvāmi, T. Süt. V. 30. 3 Ibid., V. 41.
Ibid., v. 52.
5 Ibid., V. 29. 6 Ibid., V. 3. 7 Ibid., II. 8.