Doctrines of Jainism

Author(s): Vallabhsuri Smarak Nidhi
Publisher: Vallabhsuri Smarak Nidhi Godiji Jain Derasar Mumbai

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The Doctrines of the Jainas
rational being. Jaina philosophy therefore rejects all absolute claims, conceding to them only a partial validity. The maker of such claims rejects other approaches as aberrations, failing to recognize the autonomous rationality of his fellow thinkers. The Jaina philosopher finds in such intolerance the seed of the mutually hostile systems of philosophy. He attempts to synthesize these conflicting systems into one philosophy which recognizes their findings as so many aspects of the self-same reality. This is Anekantavada or non-absolutism.
The Jainas have, moreover, attempted to classify the different philosophical views into a number of types which are known as Nayas. Thus the Nyaya-Vaisesika system, which regards the diverse traits of a thing as numerically and qualitatively different from one another and also from the substratum on which they rest, belongs to the type known as Naigama Naya or the pantoscopic approach to reality. Similarly the Vedantist, who accepts existence as applying only to the One Reality and dismisses the diverse characters as unreal appearances, affiliates him. self to the type called Sangraha Naya or the way of synthetic approach. In the same way that system which approaches reality from the analytic point of view may be called V'yavahara Naya. Jainism classifics similarly the other types of thought, whose advocates all expose themselves to the charge of extremism and fanaticism, in so far as they assert their several findings to be exclusive or mutually incompatible. The Jaina philosoplier regards them all as only partially true and attempts to synthesize all these glimpses into one comprehensive vision of the whole reality.
A common thread thus runs through the Jaina