Jain Journal 1978 07

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

Page 15

JAIN JOURNAL
Our experience tells us that no object is absolutely identical. We experience this also that the differences are not absolutely scattered. Jainism accepts this commonsense view and maintains that the identity or permanence exists in the midst of all the varying modes or differences. There is no reason to call in question the reality of the changes or of the identity, as both are perceived facts. Every entity is subject to change and maintains its identity throughout its career. Thus, Reality is a synthesis of opposites--identity and difference, per manence and change.
The Vedantist starts with the premise that Reality is one permanent universal conscious existence. The Vaibhasika and the Sautantrika believe in atomic particulars and momentary ideas, each being absolutely different from the rest and having nothing underlying them to bind them togehter. The Naiyayika and the Vaisesika hold particularity and universality to be combined in an individual, though they maintain that the two characters are different and distinct. A Real, according to them, is an aggregate of the universal, i.e., identity and the particular, i.e, difference, and not a real synthesis. The Jaina differs from all these Indian philosophers and holds that the universal and the particular are only distinguishable traits in an object which is at once identical with and different from both. A Real, according to him, is neither a particularity nor a universality exclusively but a synthesis which is different from both severally and jointly though embracing them in its fold.6
There are six ultimate substances or eternal Reals in the Jaina metaphysics : 1. Soul (jīva), 2. Matter (pudgala), 3. Medium of Motion (dharma), 4. Medium of Rest (adharma), 5. Space (ākāśa), 6. Time (kāla). The souls are infinite (ananta) in number and each soul has innumerable (asankhyeya) indivisible parts (pradešas). By contraction and expansion of these parts the soul is capable of occupying different bodies like the light of a lamp that occupies a small room as well as a big hall.8 It can occupy the smallest possible body of a bacterium or the largest possible body of a whale. No other school of Indian philosophy regards the soul as equal in extent to the body it occupies. Jainism maintains that even the emancipated souls, which have no physical forms, since they are not possessed of bodies, have the psychical forms of their last bodies. Though the liberated souls possess their own form and maintain their individuality, there is perfect equality among them. They do not obstruct one another. Jainism does not believe in personal God. Every
• Astasahasri, pp. 147-8. ? Tattvartha-sutra, 5.8. 8 Ibid., 5.16.