Book Title: ISJS Jainism Study Notes E5 Vol 02
Author(s): International School for Jain Studies
Publisher: International School for Jain Studies
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Darśana - Intuition Darśana implies intuition of generalities (sāmānya) of things without particulars (višesa). There is no grasping of details in darśana. It just gives a feeling of say existence of the object or of being. Before we know an object in details, there is a stage where we simply see, hear, or otherwise become conscious of a thing in a general way without knowing the ins and outs of it. We simply know it as being or it belonging to a class. It is thus detail-less knowledge in Jain agamas it is also called Nirākāra or formless upayoga or indeterminate cognition) or intuition. It is not necessary that this state of intuition be only through the senses. Accordingly it is identified as of four types:
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Caksu (visual intuition) Acakşu (intuition of the object through senses other than the visual sense) Avadhi (peculiar kind of clairvoyant capacity), which is able to intuit things and events at distant places and times, past or future, without the use of sense organs and hence directly by the soul i.e. objects and events not evident to sense perceptions are obvious to it. It perceives only concrete things. Kevala (intuition par excellence) and associated with pure consciousness. It refers to the all-perceiving faculty of an omniscient.
Thus the last two types of darśana are not sensual perception but a sort of indistinct awareness, which precedes the more complete or complete awareness in case of Avadhi and Kevala respectively. Concerning the first type of manifestation of consciousness i.e. darśana-upayoga, Jains talk of realization of the self - occurring in darśana and hence they use the word darśana instead of belief in samyak-darśana. On this basis, sometimes they say that darśana is svaprakāśaka i.e. self-revealing or activating to distinguish it from jñānaupayoga (Table 1.1). Vīrasena in his commentary Dhavalā states that intuition is the introspection of the self as every entity is with both specifics and generalities. This is partially true as both darśana and jñāna are cohesive and occur together either serially or simultaneously, e.g. when one becomes introvert i.e. looks and gets immersed in his soul, then the object of knowledge also becomes the object of darśana and the cogniser starts cognizing the object.
jñāna - Cognition or Knowledge Darsana, which occurs on the first contact of the object with the knower, is followed by the cognition process (Avagraha) for cognition of specifics or details about the object. Empirical
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STUDY NOTES version 5.0
