Bhagavana Mahavira and his Relevance in Modern Times

Author(s): Narendra Bhanavat, Prem Suman Jain, V P Bhatt
Publisher: Akhil Bharat Varshiya Sadhumargi Jain Sangh

Page 79

THE CONCEPTS OF MIND
J. C. Sikdar
Manas (mind) has been accepted by all the Indian systems of thought as the internal sense-organ. There is a difference of opinions among the philosophers in regard to many aspects of it, such as, nature, cause, function, character (dharma), place (sthāna), etc. The Vaiśeşikas? the Naiyāyikas2 and their followers, the Pūrvamimāṁsakas 3 have conceived manas as aņu (atomic), hence it is eternal, i. e. devoid of cause. The Sā mkhya-Yoga and their follower; the Vedānta have not accepted it as aņu; nevertheless, they have admitted it atom-like and producible, as its origination takes place from ahan kara“, the evolute of the Praksti or avidyā. According to the Buddhist and Jaina Philosophies manas is all-pervasive, but not atom-like. Both these traditions accept it as having intermediate dimension and producible. The Buddhist Philosophy maintains that manas is vijñānātmaka (consciousness-like) and it is the previous consciousness-like cause of the succeeding consciousness 5 According to Jaina Metaphysics, the physical mind is born of a kind of subtle non-living substance called manovargaņās (mind-particles) and it undergoes change like the body at every moment, while the psychical mind, because of being characterized by the capacity of knowledge and being knowledge-like, is born of the sentient substance.6
All the Indian systems of thought hold the view that the function of manas is to cause the birth of the qualities like desire, hatred, pleasure, pain, etc., and their experience, whether these qualities exist in the soul of are of the intellect? or self-evident, according to the theories of the Nyāya, Vaiśeşika, Mimāṁsaka and Jaina systems of thought, etc., or the doctrine of the Buddhist Philosophy, respectively. Manas becomes the cause in the emergence
of knowledge brought about by the external sense-organs and in the