Studies in Jaina Philosophy

SR No.: 001616
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Jain Cultural Research Society
Publication Year: 1951
Total Pages: 366
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, Knowledge, Yoga, & Epistemology
File Size: 9 MB

Page 193

156
PROBLEM OF AVIDYA
[CH.
unaffected by and aloof from it. The school does not attempt at defining the relation between the world process and the puruşa. Somehow the purusa appears to have become one with the prakrti and to enjoy it. Everything, good or bad, belongs to the praksti, and the puruṣa is there only as an indifferent onlooker. The process is conceived as evolving for the interests of the puruşa, but there is hardly any serious attempt made at showing how the prakrti establishes its contact with the purusa or, alternatively, how purusa identifies itself with the prakrti. Avidya or nescience is held as the cementing bond between the two. Here again it is left unexplained how avidyā, which belongs exclusively to the prakyti, can get the purusa involved in the process. In the ultimate analysis, avidyā is an indefinable impetus that creates motion in the prakrti to evolve itself in endless processes for the purpose of the purusa. Neither the purușa knows how his interests are being fulfilled by these processes, nor does the prakyti move with the prevision of a well-defined plan. The world is an ordered unfolding with definite designs. But the order and the design is a work of the prakyti which has neither vision nor any interest of its own. The Sankhya-Yoga fails to account for the ordered movement of prakrti. The purusa does not direct the prakrti and so the order and the design cannot be held to have come from him. It is a wonder how the movements of the prakyti are coordinated with the interests of the purusa. The relation between the purusa and the prakyti is only a make-believe. It is only an appearance. Avidyā is conceived as a link between the two which can never be linked a bridge between the two which can never be bridged. It is a principie which keeps the prakyti in motion with the purusa as its witness. The puruşa appears as involved without being really so.' It ever remains as it is. It is the prakyti that knows, thinks, and wills under the influence of avidyā and it is again the prakrti itself that retires to the state of eternal motionlessness by destroying the seed of avidyā. If the Sankhya-Yoga gives any importance to the puruşa as a partner in the world drama, it does so only to give a semblance of reality to the universally accepted fact of bondage of the soul. The whole speculation loses its meaning if the fact of bondage is not admitted. But the fundamental hypothesis of the SankhyaYoga system does not warrant the acceptance of bondage for the puruṣa. And consequently it becomes impossible for the system to account for the constant urge for emancipation and the means prescribed for the fulfilment of that urge. The Yoga prescribes yogic practices and the Sānkhya lays stress on the knowledge of the truth. But is not all this in vain in view of the fact that the puruşa, in reality, always remains out of the world? Is there any need or justification for
1 Cf. tasmān na badhyate na 'pi mucyate na 'pi samsarati kaścit
samsarati badhyate mucyate ca nānāśrayā prakstih.SK, 62.