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The Kaliedoscope of Jaina Wisdom
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karaņas'( viz. : Manas, Buddhi, Citta and Ahankāra).
Thus, the Universe, Individual Soul and God in all his various incarnations as Rāma, Krsna and others, all three of them are illusory, unreal products of Brahma : they cannot be called Brahma's 'Pariņāma', in the sense in which a pot is called a Pariņāma, i.e., product of clay, but they are his 'vivarta', i.e., pseudo-product, just as the silver for which we mistook a shining conch-shell, is a pseudo-product of the conch-shell.
By correct and complete Tattvajñāna, the individual comes to recognize the one great truth, viz., that everything except Brahma is unreal, and that not only the ‘Knowable', but also the ‘Knower' and ‘Knowledge' are nothing but illusion. By finding out this truth, the individual enters Moksa. The whole network of illusion, and therewith its own self, fades away, as the reflected image of the moon does, when the jar, containing the water with the reflecting surface, has been broken and the water run out so that, after all, nothing remains but the lunar orb itself. As the moon remains here, so Brahma alone is left at last, in his eternal happiness and boundless knowledge.
Thus, the attainment of Tattvajñāna, as the only means of reaching Mokşa, is the highest aim of the Samnyāsī, whose ideal representative is named a 'Paramahaṁsa'. Average man is not forbidden to strive after Heaven, by performing the Vedic observances.
Like Sānkhya and Mimāṁsā, the Vedānta, too, believes in a plurality of ‘Creations' and 'Pralayas'.
The second branch of Vedānta Philosophy comprises four schools, viz., the Visiştādvaita of Rāmānuja, who lived at Kanchipuram and Srirangam in Southern India in the twelfth century, the Dvaita-vedānta of Madhva or Anandatīrtha, a Kanarese Brahmin, who was born about 1200, in Southern India too, the Suddhādvaita of Vallabhācārya, who lived at the end of the fifteenth century chiefly at Benares, and the Dvaita-Advaita of Nimbārka, which rose in the fifteenth century.
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