Sambodhi 1981 Vol 10

SR No.: 520760
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1981
Total Pages: 340
Language: English, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Gujarati
Classification: Magazine, India_Sambodhi, & India
File Size: 8 MB

Page 53

Why did Jainism not develop the View
(1) A exists; (2) A does not exist; (3) A both exists and does not exist; (4) A neither exists nor does not exist.
In a particular case any of these could apply or (5) none or (6) all of them, theoretically speaking. Nāgārjuna concludes that Samsāra=Nirvāņa because option (5) can be applied to both.
Comparable to the catuṣkoți of Buddhist logic is the septabhangi8 of Jaina logic. The basic difference between the two is that in Buddhism "only one alternative could be true, but in Jainism each of the seven alternate forms of description (or any disjunction of them) could be true”.9 It is true that the fourth member of the catuṣkoți (neither is nor is not) is not included in the Jaina
seven-fold formula', but the former distinction that is the Buddhist case only one option can apply and in the Jain case all can apply is much more significant. Yet the fact remains that if Nāgārjuna could say that none of the four statements apply in the case of Saṁsāra and Nirvăņa, the Jains could argue that all of them apply - in the spirit of the Saptabhangi - to both Samsāra and Nirvāṇa and therefore they are the same ! After all if the Buddhists regard the nature of Reality as empty, the Jains regard it undetermined, 10
IV
But Jainism never moved in that direction. Why? The reason appears to be that while logically this was possible, ontologically it was not because Buddhism does not concede a soul and in it Nirvāṇa possesscs no definite location. But in Jainism not only is there the jiva, it possesses a spatial quality in that it is variable in size. Not only that the kaivalya is spatially located - at the siddha-śila on top of the lokākaśa. How then could samsara and nirvana be identified when their spatial locations differ!
V
To conclude, although logically there was no obstacle to the identity of samsära = Nirvāņa arising in Jainism as in Buddhism, ontologically the spatial dimension associated with the fiva and kaivalya, notwithstanding the commonality of the association of the spatial dimension with the two, prevented this from happening.