Concept of Paryaya in Jain Philosophy

Author(s): S R Bhatt, Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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Spiritual and Material Significance of the Concept of Paryaya 33 All changes take place in time and space. They are thus events in substances. It is the condition of the very existence. If matter and soul are wholly changeless, that is unable to change or initiate change, the cosmos will remain in a given condition, but this is not so. The changes involved in each substance are so complicated as to suggest intelligence as well as an internal agency. Thus the concept of paryaya and its study aims at the recognition and realisation of the superior intelligence which operates through different modes in different places and contexts. Spiritual Significance The spiritual significance of the concept of paryaya is the realisation that "I am the pure conscious soul and infinite are my essential attributes and my paryaya cannot be that of delusion, attachment, aversion, passions, karmas, human form, senses, etc.", as these are the modes caused by the so-called association of karmas. In bondage one does not know his real paryaya that his pure untainted paryaya of being all-knowing and all-seeing is his very own essence and nothing else other than this can be his essence. Infinite knowledge, infinite vision, infinite power and infinite bliss - the essential attributes of the real manifest completely in one paryaya when the realisation of the pure self dawns. 13 The concept of paryaya enables us to understand that we live from moment to moment and this realisation should be moment to moment. Each paryaya is independent of the other, and had it not been so one would be a cause and the other effect. Thus spiritual journey sets in with a right understanding of the svaparyaya whereby the svadravya manifests in all its glory and luster through the svagunas and svaparyayas. The paryayas here cannot be other than that of the dravya itself. All other paryayas or modifications of karmic conditioning cannot be svaparyaya in the real sense of the consciousness. All the ephemeral adjuncts of name, form, birth and death are of pudgalas acquired due to ignorance of the sadbhava rupa svabhavi paryayas. In the state of mukti, arhatatva and siddhatva there is perfect and eternal manifestation of the svabhavi paryayas. The vikari or the deformed paryayas condition the soul and make it undergo different existences i.e. gatis. Hence the saying goes, "Forsake your ignorance and live in reality, in the real you, in the real paryaya of the self and this practice alone will slowly and steadily unfold the millions of secrets lying in the dravya i.e. the self. Hence when one is