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The Wide Implications of the Concept of Mode with Special Reference to Bhagavati
Sūtra and Paņņavaņā
– Dr. Samani Chaitnya Prajna
The concept of mode is related to the concept of change. Substance and mode are the issues which have been widely discussed in the field of philosophy under the names of Being and Becoming, Permanence and Impermanence, Identity and Difference and last but not least the Universal and the Particular. More or less all of them have emerged out of the same problem i.e. the problem of change-cum-eternity.
According to Bhagavati Sūtra and Pannavaņā substance is being, permanent, identical and universal and mode is becoming impermanent, different and particular. Bhagavati Sūtra mentions that reality manifests in two forms i.e. substance and mode. It does not mean that reality is divided. It is, in fact, one but observer can see it in two forms. Siddhasena Gani supporting the scriptural view in his commentary on Tattvartha Sutra says:
‘Ontologicallly substance and mode are inseperable. The distinction of the two is only the mental projection.”
In such a condition the absolute view the substance and the mode about the reality can not be reasonable, as both are interconnected. To regard one as true and another as untrue is as meaningless as to breath without air. Substance is the uniting force through which paradoxical nature of the reality merges into unity. Contrary to it, mode is the dividing force through which unity of reality is changed into divercity. If it were not so why everything is
Tr
U11 3toare colle-fach-ope, 2002
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