Indian Culture and Jainism

Author(s): Kamalchand Sogani
Publisher: Jain Vidya Samsthan

Page 17

next, though the quality as such is never abrogated. It is on this account alleged that substance is in a state of perpetual flux. However incessant and infinite the transformations may be, the underlying substantiality and permanency can never part with existence. Substance and Paryāya are not to be distinugished like two different things, for it is substance through qualities which because of its flowing nature attains the qualification of Paryāyī. Substance and modes are neither exclusively identical nor exclusively different, but the relation is one of identity-indifference. Thus origination and destruction are applicable to Paryāyas, and persistence to qualities along with substance. Thus there is no substance (Dravya) without modification, and modification is inconceivable without substance30. Hence permanence is not the denial of change, but includes it as its necessary aspect. Spiritual implication of Paryāya: Svabhāva Paryāya and Vibhāva Paryāya
Kundakunda, the great philosopher of the 1st Century A.D. discusses the spiritual implication of Paryāyas (modifications) of self. According to him, the self, as an ontologically underived fact, is one of the six substances subsisting independently of anything else. Consciousness is the essential quality of the self. It manifests itself at the mundane stage of existence in auspicious and inauspicious psychical modifications. Whenever the auspicious mode of kindness originates, inauspicious mode of cruelty ceases and the quality of consciousness continues simultaneously. Thus self as a substance exists with its modifications and qualities.
Kundakunda speaks of essential modifications (Svabhāva Paryāyas) and non-essential modifications (Vibhāva Paryāyas) and accepts that the empirical self has been associated with the non-essential modifications (Vibhāva Paryāyas) and accepts that the empirical self has been associated with the non-essential modifications (Vibhāva Paryāyas) since an indeterminable past, thereby it has identified itself with attachment and aversion"!. We may point out in passing that the transcendental self occupies itself with essential modifications (Svabhāva Paryāyas) and goes beyond the quality of attachment and aversion and is the doer of detached actions and the enjoyer of pure knowledge and bliss. The empirical self is potentially transcendental, though this transcendental state of existence is not actualised at present; hence the distinction is
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Indian Culture and Jainism