Reals on the Jaina Metaphysics

SR No.: 001619
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Harisatya Bhattacharya
Publisher: Shatnidas Khetsy Charitable Trust Mumbai
Publication Year: 1966
Total Pages: 430
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, Religion, & Epistemology
File Size: 8 MB

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carnation has not of course been acceptable to the thinkers of other lands but the Indian doctrine that all evolutions enshrouding and attached to the psychical principle are due to subjective factors seems to be countenanced by a section of the voluntarists of the present day. The great philosopher, Schopenhauer with his celebrated theory of the bodily frame as "the objectification of the will” comes very near to the Indian doctrine when he says "Upon this (i.e. the objectification of the will) rests the perfect suitableness of the human and animal body to the human and animal will in general, resembling though far surpassing the correspondence between an instrument made for a purpose and the will of the maker and on this account appearing as design i.e. the teleological explanation of the body. The parts of the body must therefore completely correspond to the principal designs through which the will manifests: itself: they must be the visible expression of these desires. Teeth, throat and bowels are objectified hunger; the organs of generation are objectified sexual desire; the grasping hand and the hurrying feet correspond to the more indirect desires of the will which they express. As the human form generally corresponds to the human will generally, so the individual bodily structure corresponds to the individually modified will, the character of the individual and therefore it is throughout and in all its parts characteristic and full of expression”. This is almost stating in a different language the Indian doctrine in general that it is Karma which shapes our bodily frame and the Jaina theory in particular that the sense-organs, the bodily structure as a whole, its various limbs and sub-limbs, are respectively determined by the Jāti-karma, the Sarīra-karma and the Angopāngakarma. At the same time, it would be wrong not to notice the distinctions between Schopenhauer's principle of Will and the similar principles in the Indian philosophical systems. The Buddhistic doctrine of Tanhã as a subjective thirst striving for and expressing itself in objective realisation in Bhūta, Bhautika, Çitta, and Çaitta i.e. in material and conscious series, resembles Schopenhauer's Will; we miss in the
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