Central Philosophy of Jainism Anekanta Vada

Author(s): Bimal Krishna Matilal, Nagin J Shah, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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The Central Philosophy of Jainism
The Vedānta school accepted the other extreme in making the notion of permanence as ultimately real. It subordinated the notion of change completely under that of permanence. While the early Vedānta (Bādarāyana and Bhartsprapanca) rejected the Sāmkhya dualism of matter and spirit (making Brahman, the ultimate consciousness, the root of all things, spiritual and material), it accepted the Sāmkhya doctrine of real transformation or pariņāma. 48 Samkara carries this position to the further extreme by declaring all change to be illusory and superficial (cf. vivartavāda). Stated simply, Samkara's position was acceptance of one extreme of the above paradox: If something exists, it should exist always. And since only Brahman is the existent, it is eternal, everlasting and unchanging. Hence change has to be ruled out as only appearance.
Now we can consider the Jaina resolution of this dispute about causality with the help of their anekānta method and anekānta philosophy. The anekānta doctrine says that reality is both unchanging and everchanging, for reality has manifold nature, infinitefold complexity. To use the philosophical terminology of A. N. Whitehead, it is both a process and a reality. Thus, what Whitehead says about the 'chief task of metaphysics' will certainly be welcome to the Jainas :
“That 'all things flow is the first vague generalization which the unsystematized, barely analysed, intuition of men has produced. Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.”49
The notion of 'flux', Whitehead continues, has been held up by such philosophers as Heraclitus as one primary notion for further analysis, while others dwell on 'permanence of things, or on 'things'-the solid earth, the mountains, the stones, the Egyptian Pyramids, the spirit of man, God. The first group has given us the metaphysics of 'substance', and the second group the metaphysics of 'flux'. “But", Whitehead asserts, “in truth the two lines cannot be torn apart in this way." 50 This is almost an echo of what the Jaina philosophers say, viz., the Buddhists have given us the philosophy of flux while the Vedantins the philosophy of permanence, but in reality the two notions cannot be separated.
The Jainas argue in the following way. The world has an aspect that is seen as unchanging - this is its sat-aspect or svabhāva-aspect or its