Jain Journal 2002 10

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

Page 28

Jagdish Prasad Jain "Sadhak": Jaina Perspective on Advaita Vedanta
stage of Paramatman, while Paramātman is the last and the highest stage of development of Atman.
The transcendence in both Advaita and Jaina systems is beyond logical disputations and arguments. However, in Jainism the modificational standpoint, i.e. the existence of empirical consciousness at the lower level of moral and spiritual development is not denied or negated as mere figment of imagination or illusion (māyā), which, as Sri Aurobindo says, creates more problems than it solves.22 Transcendence in Jaina view signifies that the pure consciousness relinquishes the impure psychical dispositions associated with the empirical consciousness, thereby realising omniscience and such happiness as is transcendental born of the self, supersenuous, incomparable, infinite and indestructible." This transcendental self may be designated as Svayambhu. This transcendental self is the doer of its transcendental bhāvas and also their enjoyer. In this state, the self is free from the cycle of births and deaths and attains the highest and the fullest development of its personality.
Another important distinguishing feature of Jainism is that every individual self has the potentiality of attaining mokṣa (liberation) and when ātmā (self) becomes Paramatman there remains no distinction whatsoever or of any kind between the two. They are equal in all respects. Moreover, the individual self on attaining mokşa (liberation or self-realisation) retains its individual identity. There is spiritual democracy through and through. In Advaita system the individual self merges in Brahman. In no other philosophical system of the world (Vedānta, Visiṣṭādvaita, Vaiṣṇavism, Christianity or Islam) except Jainism, the self-realized or mukta being is accorded equal status or treated on a footing of complete equality with Brahman, Vişņu, Kṛṣṇa, God or Allah, with the result that the individual self is assigned a dependent and junior status, even after liberation.
There are also significant differnces between the Advaita Vedanta and Jainism on grounds of logic and ethics. Advaitism cannot explain without some duality to help how the all-in-all gave rise to itself or to the other-than-itself. The second objection is that if we follow Advaitavada, the universally accepted duals like the docr (kāraka) and its action (kriya), the things inferred and the inference (pramāņa) cannot exist. As visible differences cannot be accounted for by adoption of only Brahman, a doctrine of Māyā had to be intro
22. Life Divine, P. 466. 23.
Pravacanasära, n. 19. I.13.
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