Jaina Psychology

SR No.: 006570
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Mohanlal Mehta
Publisher: Sohanlal Jain Dharm Pracharak Samiti Amrutsar
Publication Year: 1955
Total Pages: 238
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 13 MB

Page 136

SENSE-FEELING AND EMOTION
119
disagreeableness, there is, no doubt, a transitional state in which weak pain sensations emerge along with pleasurable ones. (3) Then the vital feeling, the perpetual background of consciousness, is normally pleasurable. (4) Close observations reveal the truth that in the so-called neutral states there are fluctuations of pleasure and pain. The Jaina also holds that feeling is never neutral. For him, there are only two alternatives: either there is no feeling at all as is the case with the liberated souls that are dissociated from all types of karma,2 or there is one of the two types of feeling. To say that there is feeling but it is neither of the category of pleasure nor that of pain is a contradiction. Apart from pleasure and pain there is no feeling which is neutral. Sometimes it does happen that we have weak pain sensations or weak pleasure sensations. Such state of feeling may be called neutral state, but really speaking it is not neutral.
CO-EXISTENCE OF PLEASURE AND PAIN
Now, we come to another problem. This problem is whether pleasure and pain can co-exist in a mixture? McDougall ridicules the view that holds that pleasure and pain, being antagonistic to each other like acid and alkali, cannot co-exist. He remarks that it has been widely asserted that pleasure and pain are antagonists which cannot co-exist, because each destroys or neutralizes the other, like acid and alkali in solution; or, otherwise stated, that they are quantities of opposite signs which undergo algebraic summation, so that the feeling-tone of the subject is always one of pleasure or of pain, or, if the pleasurable and painful influences are equally balanced, neutral (i.e., non-existent). He further observes that he has no hesitation in rejecting this doctrine and in following Professor Stout, in recognizing states of feeling in which pleasure and pain are conjoined. The fact is most clearly illustrated by such emotions as pity and sorrow. In both of these emotions, pleasure and pain would seem to be blended in all proportions, from the very painful pity of the tender-hearted person who can do nothing to relieve the suffering he witnesses and sympathetically shares, to the sweet pity of the ministering angel who finds a supreme satisfaction
1 Outlines of Psychology, pp. 287-8.
2 Krtsnakarmakṣayo mokṣaḥ.
Tattvärtha-sutra, X, 3.