Samayasara

SR No.: 001607
Original Sutra Author: Kundkundacharya
Author: Hiralal Jain, A N Upadhye
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith
Publication Year: 1944
Total Pages: 370
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Religion, & Philosophy
File Size: 8 MB

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men, etc., while the difference between these classes of being are due to the different merit belonging to the individual souls." In this passage Sankara appears to drop out the Advaitic doctrine that the Brahma is the material cause or the Upadana Karana of the individual souls. The individual souls are assumed to subsist with all their individual merits and demerits irrespective of the occurrence of Pralaya and fresh creation. By bringing in the analogy of Parjanya, he converts the first cause of Brahma to Nimitta Karta like the potter making a pot out of clay. This attitude is in conflict with the general advaitic attitude. In order to save the Brahma from the responsibility of being the author of inequality existing in the world, he has to assume the independent reality of the individual souls. So far Sankara entirely agrees with the Jaina attitude represented by Kundakunda.
SAMAYASARA
While maintaining that the confusion of the Self with the Non-Self constitutes the initial mithya or the error, both the thinkers part company in further elaborations of their systems. It is certainly an error to identify the Self with the sense-characteristics which are peculiar to the physical body because the sense qualities of colour, taste and smell have nothing to do with the nature of the Self. Birth, old age, decay and death are all characteristics alien to the conscious Self. Social and economic distinction in the individual also pertain to the body and cannot be transferred to the Self. In short the Self is a Cetana entity and the non-Self is an Acetana entity, which is the object of sense perception. Both Sankara and Kundakunda therefore maintain, one following the tradition of Vedantism and the other following the tradition of Jainism, that it is mithya to speak of the body as Self. Kundakunda stops with this statement and Śankara goes beyond this. For the latter it is not only an error to confuse Self with the body, the body itself becomes mithya or illusion. Therefore Kundakunda has to call, Halt! It is only the false identification that is error. The nonSelf is not mithya or illusion. This is the fundamental difference between the two systems of metaphysics, Sankara's Advaitism and Śrī Kundakunda's Jaina metaphysics. Sankara seems to forget his own statement in the introduction of the fundamental distinction between the Self and the Non-Self when he comes to propound his theory of unqualified monism, by denying the reality of external world itself.
NATURE AND THE EXTERNAL WORLD
The reality of the external world is admitted by the Jaina metaphysics as in the case of Sankhya philosophy. The Upanisadic thought also maintains the reality of the external world in spite of its pantheistic monism. The other commentators of Vedanta Sutras, besides Sankara also maintain the reality of the external world. Śankara himself while contradicting the Buddhistic school of Vijñānavāda accepts the doctrine of the reality of the external world in refuting the Buddhistic school, The Vijñānavāda school of the Buddhistic philosophy which maintains that the external reality is