Concept of Matter in Jaina Philosophy

SR No.: 001663
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: J C Sikdar
Publisher: P V Research Institute Varanasi
Publication Year: 1987
Total Pages: 412
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, & Physics
File Size: 23 MB

Page 333

The Concept of Matter in Jaina Philosophy
ning sense-object.1 All these sense-objects i. e. matters undergo transformation into favourable and adverse states according to chemical behaviour.
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Pleasant sounds (matters) undergo transformation into unpleasant sound and unpleasant sounds into pleasant sounds; beautiful matters change into ugly matters and ugly matters into beautiful matters; pleasant matters undergo transformation into unpleasant ones and vice versa, good tasteful matters into bad tasteful-ones and vice versa, matters of pleasing touch into matters of painful touch and vice versa.2
THE SAMKHYA-YOGA VIEW ON TRANSFORMATION OF MATTER
According to the Samkhya-Yoga philosophy, Prakṛti, the fundamental cause, is all-pervasive; it is outside the scope of beginning and end in time. There is the finest seed of motion and rest in it and it cannot exist even for a moment without undergoing transformation into newer and newer forms. It preserves its own fundamental nature as permanent because of there being such nature in it. There is the capacity of expansion in it, i. e. to undergo transformation from the finest conditions into fine conditions and from the fine into the grossest material state by such order on account of which it is only one Reality. Just as the seed of a banyan tree brings forth into existence a huge banyan tree, just so the Prakṛti gives form to the multifarious universe by selfgenerated capacity without the impetus of any other entity.
"Change is taking place everywhere, from the smallest and least to the highest. Atoms and reals are continuously vibrating and changing places in any and every object. At each moment the whole universe is undergoing change, and the collocation 1. JIvābhigama, 191-192.
2. Nāyādhammakahā, 92; JIvābhigama, 191, 192.