Jainism Eternal and Universal Path for Enlightenment

SR No.: 007635
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Narendra Bhandari
Publisher: Research Institute of Scientific Secrets from Indian Oriental Scriptures Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 2011
Total Pages: 131
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 1 MB

Page 37

Jainism : The Eternal and Universal path for Enlightenment
description.
Anekintay'd goes a step further. Anekintavéd implies many foldedness. The question arises how many? Certainly more than one, but could it be infinite? It is not just two types of behavior (particle and wave nature of elementary particles) which needs to be explained but many (anek) or even infinite types of behaviour, manifested probably when we go down further to more subtle, smaller constituents of matter. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the soul is indivisible (akhand) and hence the minutest of everything that exists in the universe.
Anekintavid not only explains seemingly contradictory propositions in daily life, philosophy, microworld, mental perception and in spiritual domain, but it brought in the concept of Avyakta or inexpressibility of certain states. Science has been developed on the basis that everything is logical and expressible and does not believe in inexpressibility of any characteristics. Questions which can not be answered in affirmative or negative, like the existence of soul, could be dealt with in the framework of Anekintavid Anekintavidis not simply a multiview perception theory. Neither it is a limitation of consciousness that it has limited capability of perception of the physical world but it is the true behavior of nature. Thus it is not looking at an object from different perspectives but implies that the object can not be known from all the perspectives, at once.
Sy dvd, a corollary of Anek?natavid, is a cornerstone of Jainism. Syadvad asserts that all answers are contextual and we may be nearer the truth when we say that this too may be correct". It does not mean uncertainty but makes our understanding as certain and complete as it can be. Saptabhangi or sevenfoldedness is a corollary of Sy dvd. Every answer should have seven possibilities. For anything, it is, it is not; it is and yet it is not, it is inexpressible (or indeterminable), its existence is indeterminable, its non-existence is indeterminable, its existence as well as non-existence is indeterminable are the seven possibilities. This concept is common to Quantum behaviour, which can not always be expressed in language. This has been explained by D.S. Kothari in his essay on “Complementarity principle and Eastern philosophy".
In a nutshell, Anekintvidasserts that this is true and that also is true”. Contrast it to upanishadik concept of neti. When asked what “God” is, the Upanishads, pointing at everything conceivable, says "Neti, Neti" neither this, nor that. None of the visible objects is God. In contrast Anekintavidsays This is true and that also is true.