Jain Journal 1991 01

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

Page 14

112
transcendental self respectively. The first kind of self on account of ignorance identifies himself with the body and other external objects. The second type recognizes that his true nature is quite different from material objects. This provokes him further in the investigation of the self (ātmavidyā). In the course of such a search the person remains either bound or becomes liberated. The third is the case of paramātmasvarupa which refers to the perfect being, the realization of which comes through tapas. This transcendental self is beyond all relational aspects representing the highest nature of reality and the goal of life.
The goal of life of a person can only be attained by adopting the real point of view.5 Kundakunda does not prescribe this method in a haphazard way. A commoner has to first realize his own person-hood in a practical, concrete life-situation (the embodied empirical life) and only then can he, by powers of discrimination, raise himself to a higher realm of differentiating himself from whatever he is not. Ultimately Jina Śasana is the 'discriminatory knowledge of the Self' or the person-hood.
JAIN JOURNAL
(ii) Immateriality of the Person :
From the pure point of view the self is immaterial. Kundakunda is definite from the start that so long as the false identity of the immaterial self with the material karma remains he is said to be aprati-buddha (the unenlightened) a person lacking in discriminative knowledge."
(iii) The Empirico spiritual Reality of the Person :
The empirical state of a being is characterised by its associates namely, colour etc. It is only by association which must not be mistaken as identity. The classification and naming of the different kinds of jiva is due to nama-karma,8 the physical conditions which determine the building up of the body. Since the causal conditions are physical in nature, their products must also be physical. Hence they cannot be really identified with the nature of the self. Hence the empirical jiva, whatever may be its kind-ekendriya, dvindriya etc. owing to the bodily differences, is interpreted from the practical point of view.
5 Samayasara, 272
6 Ibid., 19, 20-25, 314
7 Ibid., 61
8 Ibid., 65-66