Jain Journal 1999 01

SR No.: 520133
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication
Publication Year: 1999
Total Pages: 42
Language: English
Classification: Magazine, India_Jain Journal, & India
File Size: 3 MB

Page 20

JAIN JOURNAL: Vol-XXXIII, No. 3 January 1999
from the One Absolute spirit a God, and their difference is only a form of duality and not a rigid insoluble dualism. Thus the legacy of Dualism left by Descartes in modern Western Philosophy was reduced to Absolute Monism by Hegel who claimed monistic explanation of the relation between mind and matter which alone, he thinks, is the proper explanation of knowledge.
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But the Jaina with all candour and freedom of thought, bases his findings on the headrock of commonsense and experience which should not be behind and flouted by any speculative bias and sows the problem of knowledge as it presents itself to his mind as something crystal clear from experience (pratiti-siddha), As I have understood the Jaina position, he has evinced a unique departure of thought in his explanation of knowledge consistently with his dualism between Jiva and Ajiva, soul and non-soul. From the very native of parināmitva of both soul and non-soul, the non-soul modifies itself into the paryaya of being known, and the soul modifies itself into the paryaya of knowing. This parināma of the soul and the non-soul is, according to the Jaina, gives us the real explanation of knowledge of matter by the mind, of the non-soul by the soul. The aparināmi or static real, conscious or unconscious cannot aford us the paricchittior knowledge which results only from the nature parināms, evolution or change in the ever evolving paryayas of the soul and the non-soul. The dualism of Descartes and his followers in Western philosophy could not be solved because of their static view of mind and matter which were diametrically opposed to each other. We notice here that this Evolutionary Realism of the Jaina is indeed a unique explanation of knowledge within the framewests of dualistic metaphysic which presented a stumbling block to the European thinkers. Hegel's nomistic Idealism reduces matter to mind against the palpable difference of mind and matter revealed in experience, pratiti, and thus offends against common sense and experience. Bertrand Russell's reduction of mind to a feeling of organisation is opposite offence against realism which he himself profess, and unknowingly glides into the materialism of a worse type. The Jaina true to his dualistic metaphysics offers a better explanation of the knowledge-problem keeping himself within the bounds of common sense and experience when he thinks that mind and matter, or in his language, soul and non-soul enter into knowledge-relation, by evolving into the paryaya of knowing and paryaya of being known' respectively.
2. Another unique contribution of the Jaina is his outstanding solution of the relation between the soul to its knowledge. Jñāna or knowledge is to him, in a relation of identity the essence with the soul.