Essential Philosophy of Hinduism Buddhism and Jainism

Author(s): Virchand R Gandhi
Publisher: Z_Selected_Speeches_of_V_R_Gandhi_002018.pdf

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sciousness or mental powers. These aggregates along with hundred and ninety-three sub-divisions exhaust all the elements, all the material, intellectual and moral properties and attributes of the individual. There exists nothing apart from these, either fixed principle or soul, or simple or permanent substance of any kind. They unite and arrange themselves so as to form a several being, undergo incessant modification along with it and dissolve at its death; the individual being throughout a compound of compounds. entirely perishes. The influence of its karma alone of its acts survives it and through this the formation of a new group of Skanathas or aggregates is immediately effected; a new individual rises into existence in some other world and continues in some degree the first. The Buddhist, strictly speaking, does not revive, but another, if I may say so, revives in his stead, and it is to avert from this other, who is to be only the heir of his karma, the pains of existence, that he aspires to Nirvāņa.
Let us now turn to Jainism and see what explanation it offers as to the nature and existence of soul. While Vedantism says that in reality nothing exists apart from Brahma, that the phenomenal world is an illusory phantom, that the only reality is noumenon the Brahma, Jainism says that both the noumenon and the phenomenon are real, the one cannot be separated from the other; Reality is not in the one, if considered alone and by itself, nor in the other if considered alone and by itself. The one as well as the other is a part of the reality. So in the Jaina philosophy, the existence of both spirit and
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