Jain Journal 1966 10

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 35

DIGEST
An Epitome of Jainism.
PURANCHAND NAHAR &
KSHITISH CHANDRA GHOSH Calcutta 1917
It is generally held that dialectic method of reasoning identifying logic with ontology is of Hegelian origin and meaning. But the dialectic method of reasoning identifying logic with metaphysics was not Hegel's own making. It originated with the Jaina sages and omniscient kevalins and has been prevalent in the field of philosophy in India from a time when Greece and Rome were steeped in the darkenss of ignorance.
With the Jainas the Absolute is but an expression of Unity in Difference as distinguished from the Absolute beyond the Relative of the Vedantins. The world process is viewed by the Jainas as being without beginning and end; but the soul, according to Jainism, does not remain for ever entangled in the messes of the dialectic process of evolution without knowing any rest or repose anywhere. The Jainas as well as every other system of Indian thought and culture hold that the jiva will never remain eternally caught up in the never-ending process of evolution. It is bound to get at that state of being and beatitude which is all free and divine. For freedom is our birth-right. Every soul is constitutionally free and potentially divine and the struggle for existence in this nether world means with the Jainas not only the struggle for bare existence in this mortal coil but for the realisation as well of this Ideal Freedom and Divinity. With this end, the enquiries constituting the Right Vision.
TRIRATNA-Right Knowledge which proceeds from Right Vision is the only process which embraces, concisely or in details, the relations in which the constituent factors of the world stand to soul and the changes as well of these relations in the dialectic movement of thought and being. The Jainas hold that both the soul and the karma stand to each other in relation of phenomenal conjunction, which reveals itself in the continuity of the display from time without beginning,