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

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mediate. The immediate result of pramāna is the removal of ignorance. However, the immediate result of the absolute knowledge (Kevala Jñāna) is bliss and equanimity (sukha, upekşā), while that of practical knowledge (i.e. Syadvāda), is the facility to select or reject what is conducive or not, to self-realisation 35 The development of omniscience is necessarily accompanied by the acquisition or perfect of absolute happiness, 26 and freedom from destructive karmas.37 This happiness is independent of everything, and hence eternal; it is not physical but spiritual.2 8
The most fundamental difference between Syādvāda and Sarvajñatā or Kevala Jñāna is that the former "leeds us to relative and partial truth whereas omniscience to absolute truth."99 After all, Syādyāda is an application of scriptural knowledge 30 which determines the meaning of an object through the employment of one-sided nayas, 31 and the scriptural knowledge is a kind of mediate or indirect knowledge.
True, unlike Naya (knowledge of an aspect of a thing), Syādvāda has in its sweep all the different nayas, but even then it never amounts to be the absolute truth. In fact, Syādvāda is merely an attitude of philosophising which tells us that on account of the infinite complexities of nature and our limited cognitive capacity what is presented is only a relative truth. Now, one may ask if we combine the results of the sevenfold nayas in. to one whole, cannot we get at the absolute truth? Is not the abso. lute truth a sum of relativa truths ? Toe aaswer is in the negatve.
25 Siddhasena Divākara, Nyāyāvatara, 28; cp. Samantabhadra, Ibid., 104. 26 Kundakunda, Pravacanasāra, I. 5); I. 19; I. 68. 27 Ibid., I. 60. 28 Ibid., I. 65. 29 Haribhadra, Anekānta Jaya Pataka, el. H. R. Kapadia, Vol. II,
p. CXX. 30 Akalanka, Lizhi yastrayın, (Akılarkı Grantha Trayam), ed. M. K.
Jaina, (Calcutta), Singhi Jaina Granthamālā, 1939), 62, 31 Siddhasena Divākara, Ibid., 30.