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 228

SOME POSITIVE JAINA ARGUMENTS..
215
to the great bulk of mountain, etc., so our “imperfect knowledge is capable of gr (y h in the direction of perfection and the bighest point 10 which it can be carried, will be omniscience.” 154 We can also approach this problem in a different way. We should always remember the nature of soul and its consciousness-infinite' (ananta-jñāna). Potentially the soul is omniscient hence the moment its veils are removed, the soul knows everything.
The Mīmāṁsakas have strongly attacked this position on the following two grounds : firstly, there is a limit to the development of our cognitive powers. If omniscience is said to be the final culmination of cognition, it could be so reached, either through sense-perception or through mental-perception. Now, it cannot be through sense-perception because sense-perception cannot transcend its limitations. Through practice and other things our powers develop but no one has been found to become capable of perceiving things beyond the reach of senses, however rich his practice may be.
The Mimāṁsakas put this matter in a very sarcastic way : “The man, who can jump into the sky to the height of fifteen feet can never jump to the height of eight miles, however hard he may practice jumping."165 Similarly, the development of knowledge cannot be taken the form of omniscience. Further, even mental-perception cannot apprehend all things because it cannot operate independently of senses; if it could, then no person would be deaf or blind.
The second objection of the Mīmāṁsakas is more severe. Granting, they say, all intelligence to be made better by practice and exercise, it cannot be said that this proves no inherent limitations. For example, "in the matter of auditory perception, some men are superior to other in apprehending distant and
154 Mallisena, Syādvāda-mañ jari (with Anyayoga-vyavachheda-dvātrimsikā
of Hemacandra, ed. A. B. Dhruva, XVIII, p. 121). 155 śāntarakṣita, Ibid., 3168. See 3157–3174,