Facets of Jain Philosophy Religion and Culture

Author(s): Shreechand Rampuriya, Ashwini Kumar, T M Dak, Anil Dutt Mishra
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 20

The Axioms of Non-absolutism
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Concomitance between the Permanent and the Impermanent The second axiom of non-absolutism is the concomitance of the permanent and the impermanent, the truth of the one is verified by the truth of the other.
The materialist thinks that the sensuous world alone is true. There is nothing like the spiritual. The spiritualist, on the other hand, asserts that it is the self alone that is true, the sensuous world is false. The logicians of the Jaina school investigated the truth behind the rival claims and found that the sensuous world was not false. Whatever is possessed of causal efficiency is true. The senses are causally efficient and hence cannot be untrue. Their objects also cannot be false. The characteristic features of a real are origination, cessation and persistence. Whatever is causally efficient does necessarily arise, cease to exist and also continue. To say that the sensuous world is true and the self is untrue can be possible only in ordinary parlour, but it can never he a language expressive of the truth that is deep and unfathomable. On the other hand, to say that the self alone is the ultimate truth while the sensuous world is unadulterated falsehood, can be the language of the spiritual world, but it can never be true of the world as it is. The saints and philosophers cannot express themselves in identical linguistic tools. In spiritual idiom the sensuous objects are momentary and evanescent. Such idiom could inspire detachment and renunciation, but would miserably fail as a device of logical investigation of the nature of truth. Logic does not distinguish between the reality of the sensuous object and the reality of the self. The material atoms are as real as the spiritual self in the eyes of the rationalist. All that originates, vanishes and persists is real. This triple criterion of truth is as validly applicable to the material atom as to the spiritual self. When the spiritual values become identical with the world outside, the doctrine of impermanence turns to be a controversial issue. Otherwise that is a very valuable doctrine. All the spiritual thinkers, without any exception, have endorsed it. The Jainas also have assigned adequate importance to it. Among the twelve contemplations, impermanence occupies the first position. The practitioner of such contemplation repeats within himself the formula—everything is impermanent. But that belongs to the sphere of spirituality. As soon as one switches to rational thinking, it is the definite view of the Jaina philosophers that the discrepancy between the impermanence
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Tattvarthasutra. 5.29. upādavyayadhrauvyayuktam sat.