Golden Steps To Salvation

Author(s): Padmasagarsuri
Publisher: Arunoday Foundation

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them; and then we can melt it and make a crown out of it. Whatever the form it takes it remains gold, and as gold, it is permanent, though in its modified form it is transitory. The gold which is the basic reality can loc modified into a necklace or bracelets or a crown. The same thing applies to all objects. The food that is sweet when we are hungry is not tasty when we are ill. In this manner, the same food can be sweet as well as bitter, good as well as bad.
Those people who think that Syadvāda (the theory of probability) is Samshayavāda (the theory of scepticism; lave not tried to know what Syadvāda is. They might have merely heard of it. That is all. There is no need to convince them. They will realise the difference between those two by means of their own contemplation. The difference between the two lies in the fact that in Suisharavāda both remain undecided and undefined. The believers in Samshayavāda cannot decide whether what they perceive is a serpent or a rope but in Syā dvā da, there is a definition of both the levels of reality. From the point of view of dhravya, an object is real and permanent, but from the point of paryāya or modification, it is unreal and nonpermanent. It is said in the Adyatma Upanishad.
उत्पन्नं दधिभावेन
नष्टं दुग्ध तथा पुनः गोरसत्वात् स्थिरं जानन्
स्याद्वादद्विङ जनोपिकः? Utpannam dadhibhāvena,
Nashtam dugdhātayā punah Gorasatvāt sthiram jānan
Syāduādadvijanopikah. Milk changes and becomes curds. But the quality of whiteness is present in milk as well as in curds. The man who realises this truth never opposes this truth.
In the same Upanishad, it is said elsewhere: