Family and Nation

Author(s): Mahapragna Acharya, A P J Abdulkalam
Publisher: Harper Publications India

Page 26

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THE FAMILY AND THE NATION
principles of inductive and deductive logic be developed and applied? How does one evaluate a hypothesis for its scientific merit? What is a valid inference? What constitutes a scientific proof?
In the quest for the truth, the Upanishad seers concluded that Brahma is the Reality. Whatever is in existence is all Brahma. Brahma is the only one and there exists nothing other than it; reality is non-dual. He who sees plurality or believes in duality, undergoes the process of death again and again. The Aitareya Upanishad? explains that there was only one soul before creation. It thought to itself, 'I should create divisions of the Universe (lokas)' and with this thought, it created different worlds. According to Chhandogya Upanishad, the real cannot be created from the unreal. In the beginning, there was nothing else excepting the monadic real. It desired to multiply itself and manifested itself in many forms.
The Buddhist philosophy rests on three existential concepts of impermanence (anitya), suffering (dukha), and no-self (anatman). The human is constituted by five aggregates (skandha) which flow together and give rise to the impression of identity and persistence through time. There was a general agreement that there is no soul that resides within the human body and leaves it at death, like the driver of a bus who gets off at the end of the journey. There is only the aggregation of components, which is caused by the previous moment and causes the next. In Mahayana4 Buddhism, this term was extended to apply to all appearance that arises from Shunyata, and is therefore devoid, empty of self. The Sarvastivadi school of Buddhism (believing in the doctrine that all is real) considers the existence of a substance dependent on itself and not emanating from an external single source such as Brahma.
According to Jain philosophy, all substances have objective existence. They do not depend upon any external reality