Jain Journal 1977 01

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

Page 22

JANUARY, 1977
93
knowledge about objects. It is said that the knowledge obtained at this is like the knowledge of a thing, seen through a thin, transparent substance :
vastu pašyati, sāpra
abhraka-vayavahitamiva yadā bhāvyamānam karşa-paryantāvasthā
----Nyāya-Vindu-tika
The object when seen is yogi-pratyakşa is like a small fruit in one's hand, perceived in the perfect and the clearest possible manner.
karatalāmalakavadbhāvyamānas yārthasya yaddarsanam tad yoginah pratyakşam taddhi sphutābham
-Nyāya-Vindu-tikā
As a result of this uncommon perception, peculiar to a sage, the objects of the universe were apprehended by Buddha and saints like him, ‘like the Amalaka-fruit in hand and they succeeded in attaining omniscience.
and Omniscience:
The Non-Advaita Vedanta
The Liberated State Views:
It has been pointed out more than once that the liberated soul and the soul which has entered the nirvana, are not omniscient, although omniscience may be possible in a being who is about to attain final emancipation. This is the theory, upon which the Sankhya, the Yoga, the Nyaya, the Vaisesika, the Buddhist and the Advaita monists of the Vedanta school are agreed. But those philosophers of the Vedanta school who do not admit the identity of the Brahman and the Jiva, hold a different view. According to them, the liberated Ilva becomes omniscient, and the grounds for this view of the dulistic Vedantists are obvious. They do not admit the reality of the absolute and the undertermined (nirguna) Brahman. The Brahman, according to them, is saguna i.e., determined and endowed with attributes. The absolute monists of the Vedanta school maintain that it is impossible to ascribe omniscience or any qualification to the liberated soul which is merged in the attributeless Brahman. Even these monists do not deny that a Soul which is by dint of its self-culture and self-development has succeeded in closely associating itself with the qualified or the saguna Brahman, attains omniscience. The Vedantins, other than the absolute monists hold that Brahman is saguna or qualified) and that the absolute, unqualified, or the nirguna Brahman is an unreal abstraction, that the mukti or emancipa