Comparative Study Of Jaina Theories Of Reality And Knowledge

SR No.: 022768
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Y J Padmarajaiah
Publisher: Jain Sahitya Vikas Mandal
Publication Year: 1963
Total Pages: 446
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 35 MB

Page 77

CHAPTER II
57
The wealth of human adventure and evolution becomes one vast fiction built on—but does not actually rest on—the mere fleeting moments.
The ethical and spiritual motive underlying this repudiation of substance or soul is clear. It is to do away with a'continuant' having a prior and posterior existence and offering an enduring basis for the mutations of life and matter. This is considered to be the basis of avarice and egoism which breed the ills of life. To relieve the world from suffering meant, on this theory, to rid the evil-stricken beings from their pre-occupation with that which endures and lures them away from the path of prajñā. But in achieving this Buddhism has overshot the mark. Or rather, the logical result of this view is that in the attempt to be cured of ailments man tends to be cured of life itself. Furthermore, speaking ethically, man has no basis for selflessness once he has lost the self. This prescription is as radical and extreme as its Vedāntic opposite which over-reaches its aim by offering a universal but static self or the absolute, and denying the ultimate validity to the values of this mighty frame of the mutating world which must form an integral part of reality. Reality flies on both wings—the right wing of the Vedānta with its allegiance to the Upanișadic being, and the left wing of the nairātmya metaphysics (becoming) descending from the deep intuition of Buddha.
1. Cf. "Having seen by wisdom all the passions and evils arising
from the view of Ātman (satkāyadşști), and having also known that the object of it is Ātman, a Yogin denies its existence." This is V. S. Bhattacharya's E. T. of a verse by Candrakirti in Madhyamakāvatāra, VI. 123. See The Basic Conception of Buddhism, p. 72 and f.n. 23 thereon.