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32
Lord Mahavira
The adoption of this vada rescues man's understanding from the perverse exaggeration of one-sided and extreme positions. Truth is ultimately a matter of comprehending all the partial characterizations of reality. No truth is the whole truth and there is no error other than the refusal to expand one's perspective. This wholesome insistence on intellectual breadth is a unique contribution of the Jaina theory of knowledge.
In confirmity to this basic law, Jainism enminates all one-sided methodologies in the pursuit of knowledge. It recognizes the undemable values of empiricism but does into terminate in empiricism. It exhibits a keenness to supplement sense-experience with the possible acquisition of insight through reason. Sense-experience and reasoning arising from it do not exhaust the sources of human knowledge. There are super-normal. perceptions also. What may be called intuitive perception is also a fact. The field of knowledge is conceived as including all these ways of knowing. Crowning all these is Kevala-Jnana or perfect knowledge, which is reality in the perfected personality. This picture of knowledge in all this width and height brings out the spirit of comprehension in Jaina thought. It needs special appreciation in sharp contrast to other systems of Indian philosophy which have upheld the exclusive validity of either sense-perception or reason or scriptural authority or mystic intuition. A total mobilization of the resources of the human mind for purposes of gaining access to reality in its many-sided wholeness is a phenomenal achievement.
This Spirit operates with equal effectiveness in the realm of metaphysics. A resolute rejection of one-sidedness, is the
characteristic mark of Jaina conception of reality. Who have a due recognition of the reality of the temporal and changing aspects of the Cosmos as also of the timeless and unalterable entities. Reality is not broken up into atomic particulars. Nor is it misconceived as a unity excluding differentiation altogether. Substances bearing multiplicity of attributes and modifications constitute the stuff of being. There is being and becoming, oneness and plurality, all forming the rich and complex totality of the real. Reality includes
| SR No. | 023278 |
| Book Title | Lord Mahavira Vol 03 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | S C Rampuria |
| Publisher | Jain Vishva Bharati Institute |
| Publication Year | 2001 |
| Total Pages | 232 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 20 MB |