Pravachanasara

SR No.: 003289
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A N Upadhye
Publisher: Shrimad Rajchandra Ashram
Publication Year: 1964
Total Pages: 612
Language: Hindi, Sanskrit
Classification: Book_Devnagari
File Size: 16 MB

Page 106

Introduction
73
is nothing real. The phenomenal is a part of the Real, but only a fragment of the totality of the real'. This searching insight of the Upanisadic philosophers has brought them to a peculiar stand of awareness: whatever is around the subject, the phenomenal world including the subject, is illusory; and what is noumenal, the Brahman, is unknowable, and it is truly beyond expression. When the limited individual, realizing himself as one with the cosmic spirit viz., Brahman, knows this, he knows everything in fact. The omniscience or all-knowledge, according to Upanisads, would come to mean the complete negation of nescience, the cosmic illusion, by fully grasping the underlying reality, the Unity. This omniscience is Brahman-knowledge for which senses, thought and instruction are no means at all; it is a state of the supreme bliss of Turiyavasthā. The Vedantic Brahman has no appreciable individuality in a finite sense; he is an all-embracing and all-pervading individuality; or better the cosmic principle standing for all that exists, is intelligent and is bliss; with the monist it is unique with no second; and with Samkara whatever else that appears to be besides him is simply a figment of nescience. In this Vedantic conception which is thoroughly idealistic, the [p. 77: objectivity is not outside the knower; while for Jaina omniscience, there is a complex external objectivity infinitely extended over both time and space which the omniscient has to visualise as easily as the eye does the object of sight. In Jainism, because of its notion of pluralism of spirits, the self retains its individuality even in the stage of omniscience and eternal bliss, while in Vedanta Brahman is all with no scope for individual spirits. In Vedanta Brahman, who is one without a second, is alone omniscient, while in Jainism many spirits might function as omniscients mutually interpenetrating without any conflict. In all this the realistic tone of Jainism is quite apparent.
OMNISCIENCE ACCORDING TO BUDDHISM.-Buddhism has claimed omniscience for Buddha, and Santarakṣita holds that Buddha's omniscience is justified because of the correctness and validity of the doctrines propounded by him, because Buddha was free from the veil of suffering, and because he had destroyed the veil covering the transcendental truth. The unbounded compassion of Buddha even to a sūdra is a characteristic of his omniscience. Men ordinarily know only the general, while Buddha knows all the particular details. When Buddha sees them he is not stained by dirty contacts; he sees them keeping his mind untainted. His mind is endowed with super-normal excellence, so he sees everything clearly. So far as the personalistic note is concerned Jainism and Buddhism agree in the interpretation of omniscience, and their respective teachers are claimed to be omniscient. The Jaina claim of omniscience, however, for Mahavira that he was 'omniscient, all-seeing and possessed of complete knowledge and sight; that whether walking or standing, asleep or awake, knowledge and insight were continually present' has been ridiculed by Buddhists. Buddha's claim of omniscience is of a slightly different character: he remembers past lives as far back as he wishes; he can see the death and birth of beings according to their karmas; and as a result of the destruction of asava he has attained, in this life,
1 Hume: Thirteen Principal Upanisads, Intr. p. 37.