tman_and_moksa

SR No.: 020053
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: G N Joshi
Publisher: Gujarat University
Publication Year: 1965
Total Pages: 901
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 12 MB

Page 350

Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
318
Atman and Moka
kalpa) due to the absence of knowledge from the stone'. It is but natural to regard such a lifeless and unconscious state equivalent to the lifeless state of a stone. But in the stone can never occur the various psychical attributes like knowledge, desire, pain, pleasure, effort and volition of the soul. The soul possesses the unique capacity or potentiality to possess or develop in suitable circumstances the above characteristics. The soul is therefore, entirely different in kind and power from the stone. The simile of stone is too inadequate to express the real condition of the soul in the state of liberation. Th. Stcherbatsky quotes from Nyāyasāra (p. 40) the following passage in reply to the above objection raised against the Nyāya liberation--"But”, says the author, "Wise men do not exert themselves for bliss alone. Experience shows that they also exert themselves to escape pain, like even they, e.g., "avoid being stung by thorns."-Phenomenal life being here comparable to pain, the result is that the annihilation of it alone is the ultimate aim of man on earth. This ultimate annihilation and this lifeless substance receive the epithet of the place of Immortality (amstyu-pada m
ayy)," the same epithet which final annihilation receives in early Buddhism."Though the Nyāya liberation is negativistic, it is noteworthy that the Nyāya system ultimately leaves at least some state of existence, though stone-like, to the soul, which is not found even so much in the Buddhist passion for
· 1 Sarvadars'anasangraha (Com)., p. 247.
2 Ştcherbatsky : The Conception of Buddhist Nirvāna, p 59.
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