Jain Journal 2002 10

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

Page 21

JAINA PERSPECTIVE ON ADVAITA VEDANTA Jagdish Prasad Jain "Sadhak"
Sankara's introduction to his Bhāṣya is a philosophical masterpiece by itself. There he gives his own personal opinion without being constained to follow the sutras of the text. Hence he freely expresses his views on life and things. This introduction contains sevcral ideas, which correspond closely to those of Acarya Kundakunda. Firstly, both maintain that the Self and non-Self are two entirely distinct entities. Secondly, both make the distinction between vyavaḥāra and paramārthika (Śankara) or niscaya (Kundakunda), i.e. between empirical and transcendental perspectives. The two entities, Self and non-Self, have no common nature and no common attributes. One is cetana (subject or viṣayin) and the other is acetana (object or viṣaya) or jada. The two are as much as opposed to each other as light and darkness.
According to Śankara the attributes of the one cannot be transferred or superimposed upon the other. But our practical life depends on the mutual transferrence or the imposition of external attributes upon the aiman (Self). According to him, this superimposition of the extra personal attributes on the self can be of the body (e.g. when one says I am fat or thin:") of the senses as in "I am dumb or oneeyed; or of the mind such as desire, intention, doubt, determination and the like. This beginningless adhyāsa (superimposition or confusion) of the nature of wrong cognition (mithyapratyayarūpaḥ) is natural (naisargika). It rests on false knowledge (mityājñāna-nimitta) and is brought about by Nescience or Avidya. As a result, the individual self in the empirical world or Samsara is influenced by this wrong knowledge, confusion, or philosophicsl/transcendental error (avidyā) and identifies himself with external objects or various psychic states. Thus, Sankara points out that in ordinary life, every individual has to operate only through his body and sense without which life itself would be impossible in the concrete world. Even the cognitive process of knowledge depends upon sense-perception and intellec
1. Sankara Bhāṣya. Introduction to Brahmasutra. as translated by S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy. Vol II (1931), page 506.
2. Ibid