ISJS Jainism Study Notes E5 Vol 04

Author(s): International School for Jain Studies
Publisher: International School for Jain Studies

Page 293

k rmika veil masking it decreases. Pure soul cognizes all entities directly and does not use any media for cognition. It cognizes directly and simultaneously all objects of knowledge.
Dar ana - Intuition
Dar ana implies intuition of generalities (s m nya) of things without particulars (vi e a). There is no grasping of details in dar ana. 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 gamas it is also called Nir k ra or formless upyoga 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:
⚫ Cak u (visual intuition)
Acak u (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 allperceiving faculty of an omniscient.
Thus the last two types of dar ana 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. dar ana-upyoga, Jains talk of realization of the self- occurring in dar ana and hence they use the word dar ana instead of belief in samyak dar ana. On this basis, sometimes they say that dar ana is svaprak aka i.e. self-revealing or activating to distinguish it from jñ na-upyoga (Table 1.1). Virasena in his commentary Dhaval states that intuition is the introspection of the self as every entity is with both specifics and generalities. This is partially true as both dar ana and jn na 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 dar ana and the cogniser starts cognizing the object.
Jñ na - Cognition or Knowledge
Dar ana, 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 soul uses pram a and nayas to cognize an entity. As every substance has infinite qualities and modes and there are infinite substances; so the empirical soul cognizes them using pram a (for complete knowledge of the substance) and naya (for partial knowledge of the substance from a specific view point or objective). Empirical souls can cognize only concrete objects (mati and ruta with the assistance of senses and mind; avadhi and manah pary ya directly though) while pure self has just kevala jn na. Further mati and ruta jn na are the only types of acquired jn na (the other three types of jn na are direct by soul). Some c ryas say ruta in na can cognise non-concrete objects also, though indirectly with the aid of sermons of kevalis / omniscient. We shall now try to see how the empirical soul and pure soul use their sentiency faculty and its manifestation to know the objects of knowledge.
Cognition by Empirical Soul
The empirical soul, by its very nature, needs the assistance of external agencies, either as a medium or as an aid to acquire knowledge of the object of knowledge. The physical or celestial body, accompanying the empirical soul is used as a means or a medium to acquire and transfer knowledge. The human beings are said to have the five sense organs and the body comprising the nervous system including the brain (for processing), mind and a host of nerve centers. The k rma a arira (like a database of programs and data in computers) accompanying the empirical soul is a storehouse of the traces (karmas) and activated by the tejus arira (which connects the k rma a arira with soul and the nervous system for information exchange purposes). The empirical soul is affected by the activities (called yoga in Jain literature) of the sense organs as well as the activation of the karmas and called as psychic or bh va-mana, which cause the lumping of mind particles (manovarga s) in
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STUDY NOTES version 4.0