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THE ESSENCE OF JAINA SCRIPTURES
its changes or modifications. These include inauspicious, auspicious, or pure states of consciousness or the manifestations, or modes of cognition, feeling and volition, which are inalienable attributes of conscious entity.
And this is what constitutes the stability (dhrauvya) constituent of a substance, something stable, persisting or enduring through its modes or in the midst of its changes, modifications or evolutions and makes the existent reality (substance), including jiva, a dynamic, evolvent, permanent reality (parinami nitya), in Jainism, not an unchanging, unevolving, unmodifying entity as is the case in Samkhya system of philosophy and Advaita Vedanta.
The substance, quality and modification are said to be inseparable (aprathak). There is no differentiation of place or location. They occupy the same locale (avibhakta pradesh). Nevertheless, there is distinctnessor otherness (anyatva) because there is non-identity (a-tadbhava) among them (PS 106). Logical Distinction between Substance, Quality and Modification
To fully comprehend reality, it is evident that there is a logical and conceptual distinction between substance, quality and modification. However, they must necessarily be taken together as they are inseparably rolled into one. Any separation (prthakatva) between them would suggest a cleavage between the evolutes and the evolvent reality, which will reduce each one of them into non-existent entity.106 The qualities and modifications are both distinct (bhinna) as well as not distinct (abhinna) from the substance. “Metaphysically, they are non-distinct or having identity/unity with the dravya (substance), but logically they are distinct from it." Without this logical distinction, there is no other way of apprehending the substance as substance, qualities as such, and paryaya (modification) per se.107
In other words, substance and attributes are inseparable. However, the substance is not the same as its attributes and the attributes are not similar to substance. The difference between the two is only a difference of reference, not one of existence, even though it is a fact that it is the substance that manifests its nature through its attributes. A substance without attributes and attributes dissociated from the underlying substance would all be meaningless abstractions. Attributes therefore can neither exist without the substance nor can the substance be divorced from the attributes. Hence, in the world of reality, there
