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JAIN JOURNAL
Vol. XXXVI
No. 1 July
2001
SOME REFLECTIONS ABOUT ANEKĀNTAVĀDA
MARIA LUISA TORNOTTI
The doctrine of anekāntavāda is an important and original contribution of Jainism not only to India, but also to human culture in general. It has in itself that characteristic of complexity connoting all Jainism, that has tried during its history to clarify and define with sharpness the different problems which invest all the ambits of existence, also the thinest aspects of life, bringing forward doubts and questions that can arise.
What is of particular importance about anekāntavāda, is not to put in light the limits of the different religious philosophies that declare reality's limited views, but rather its value on the plane of human knowledge and of the development of awareness. So the positive and constructive aspects that this doctrine has in itself and that motivate
it.
Anekantavāda in fact is a cultural development of the cognitive approach in relation to reality, that, as enlightened masters have taught, doesn't by no means limit itself to what appears to our ordinary perceptions organs. Since man's last goal is mokşa, anekāntavāda contributes to demolish obstacles, which divide him from that goal.
It starts from the assumption that what we ordinarily perceive, as I was saying, doesn't exhaust at all reality and therefore it is necessary to open our inner doors for being available to a wider and deeper knowledge.
Jainism explains that it's the accumulated karman which obscures and overshadows our world's perception and then it is necessary to stop the karmic inflow and purify oneself from the accumulated karman.
Right conduct, right knowledge and right view together pave the spiritual course. Right view is, as Umāsvāti asserts, the bent to the faith that has truth as aim and faith consists therefore in the pursuing of truth, of the real nature of things. That involves the constant
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