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Nayas : Ways of Approach and Observation
35
So the opposition of unity to diversity is only a fignent. The different approaches only illustrate the truth that the tendency to differentiation and specification, if not checked by reference to the other - concomitant traits, will culminate in disastrous results. The specification begins from the third approach. The fourth only concentrates the attention of the knower upon the immediate presents. The fifth makes the word a determinant factor and the sixth follows it up by abolishing all synonyms. The seventh asserts the actual presence of the verbal meaning to be the sole and determinant of the reality. If however it were conceded that each trait is a real factor and it is indifferent to the other traits, then each of them can be accepted as a true estimation of the reality. Of course each way of approach only succeeds in catching hold of a part. But the actuality of the part is undeniable. If the advocate of these different ways of approach asserts that the several findings are exclusive and sole character of the real he will expose himself to the charge of extremism and fanaticism.
In practical life when a politician concentrates on the immediate need of the hour and refuses to take a retrospective or prospective view he makes himself guilty of exclusiveness. All dogmatism owes its genesis to this partiality of outlook and fondness for a line of thinking to which a person has accustomed himself. The Jaina logician welcomes all the light that comes from different ways of approach and integrates them in one whole in which all these finite traits can subsist as moments. This intellectual charity will resolve all conflict and rivalry. So whatever may be the calling and avocation a man may be called upon to pursue he can achieve success and combine it with benevolence and amity if he is alive to the importance and the utility of all the different ways of approach in the study of problems.
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