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THE ESSENCE OF JAINA SCRIPTURES
Svami, a Shvetambara saint, who joined the Digambara sect) are gross distortions of Kundakunda's teachings and Jain scriptures (agam) as such. The Kanjipanthi opine that dhruva (constancy) signifies aparinami chaitanya tattva, i.e. changeless consciousness."'4 In reality, however, dhruva actually signifies that which exists, subsists or persists as a constant factor in all three times (trikali). This constant factor in jiva (self) is consciousness-as-such (jivatva or parinamika bhava, i.e. atma or soul), which is evolvent (parinami) and the substratum of its attributes of cognition, feeling and volition as also all psychic states, changes or modifications, pure or impure.
Substance (dravya), according to Kundakunda, is characterized by permanence or continuity and change. The dhruva (constant, eternal) element in substance comprises its “svabhava, i.e. own nature” (in the case of jiva, its jivatva, i.e. consciousness-as-such), which it never leaves (aparityakta). The evolving or change aspect is concerned with the modifications (paryaya or parinama) of substance and its qualities or attributes (PS 95-96).
The soul, which is parinami, H.M. Bhattacharya points out, cannot be regarded as something different from its parinama (evolution, change or modification)."15 Apart from the conscious self, the static self without its conscious modification and mere modifications are both equally meaningless abstractions. 116 The soul in its essence (chaitanya) is a conscious entity/substance, which undergoes modifications (parinama). The self, according to Jainism, is a dynamic reality, something stable in the midst of its changes, a unity in diversity, a being in becoming."!!7 Bhattacharya further observes:
A conscious reality is never divorced from its own conscious modifications and qualities in which lies its very life. . .. A parinama or modification, issuing from the parinami or the modifying, and yet not in essential relation with the parinami, is as false an abstraction as the aparinami or immutable real without any parinama or modification. 18
If there is no permanence, B.K. Matilal points out, there cannot be any change/fluctuation, for it is only the permanent that can change. It is only the persisting soul that can transmigrate"? from animal into a human, etc. form, condition (gati) or mode (paryaya).
Jainism, including Kundakunda, upholds that substance, including soul (consciousness) substance, the essence of jiva (self), is an existent reality, which is eternal (nitya) in the sense of existing, in all three
