Jain Journal 1969 01

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

Page 14

108
bearing on the constitution of cosmos frequent reference is made to the days and nights of Brahma, the periods of manvantara and the periods of pralaya. But the Jainas, leaving all symbolical expressions aside, distinctly reaffirm the view previously promulgated by the previous hierophants, that matter and soul are eternal and cannot be created. You can affirm existence of a thing from one point of view, deny it from another and affirm both existence and non-existence with reference to it at different times. If you should think of affirming both existence and non-existence at the same time from the same point of view, you must say that the thing cannot be spoken of. Under certain circumstances, the affirmation of existence is not possible; similarly, of non-existence and also of both.
JAIN JOURNAL
What is meant by these seven modes is that a thing should not be considered as existing everywhere at all times, in all ways, and in the form of everything. It may exist in one place and not in another at one time. It is not meant by these modes that there is no certainty, or that we have to deal with probabilities only as some scholars have taught. Even the great Vedantist Sankaracarya has possibly erred when he says that the Jainas are agnostics. All that is implied is that every assertion which is true is true only under certain conditions of substance, space, time, etc.
This is the great merit of the Jaina philosophy, that while other philosophers make absolute assertions, the Jaina looks at things from all standpoints, and adapts itself like a mighty ocean in which the sectarian rivers merge themselves. What is God, then? God, in the sense of an extra-cosmic personal creator, has no place in the Jaina philosophy. It distinctly denies such creator as illogical and irrelevent in the general scheme of the universe. But it lays down that there is a subtle essence underlying all substances, conscious as well as unconscious, which becomes an eternal cause of all modifications, and is termed God.
The doctorine of the transmigration of soul, or the reincarnation, is another grand idea of the Jaina philosophy. The companion doctrine of transmigration is the doctrine of karma.
The Sanskrit word karma means action. "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again" and "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" are but the corollaries of that most intricate law of karma. It solves the problem of the inequality and apparent injustice of the world.