Jain Journal 2005 10

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

Page 11

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JAIN JOURNAL VOL-XL, NO. 2 OCTOBER. 2005
consisting of individual selves and material objects, all of which are said to be subsumed or sublated in one and only one "Absolute", the monistic unchanging reality, the Universal Cosmic Brahman. Such a concept or idea of an all encompassing Self, such as the Vedantic Atman or Brahman, J, Krishnamurti observes, is "just another thought construction and another manifestation of illusion". The eternal reality of the metaphysical soul substance or Brahman of the Vedantin, G. Srinivasan points out, exists independently of any relation to temporal empirical existence and as such necessarily falls outside the scope of phenomenological analysis. The Jaina concept of the transcendental Self or pure consciousness, on the other hand, is to be regarded as "transcendence in immanence", to use G. Srinivasan's phraseology, and as such it is necessarily "related" [in temporal empirical existence] to the modes of intentional consciousness. It does not mean transcedence from one reality to another or from unreality to reality but from one poise of consciousness to another within a single realm of consciousness. Self-realization thus viewed is selftranscendence.
The Buddhist school of philosophy gradually drops the possible and even the conceivable characteristics of reality and reaches the void or sunya as the absolute. Buddhism argues that when the idea of a real entity or being is dissected, it is found that it refers to nothing: it is like peeling off an onion layer after layer and finally nothing is found underneath. So in order to become free, one should get rid of the notion that one is a real being or a substantial self, that one can enter into relations with others and that one can possess this or that, and that one can become or has not become something else. Buddhism thus teaches the way to nirvana's or the experience of non-beingness in the absolute form, a non-relational (nirapekṣa) state of void or sunya.
According to the concept of vacuity, void or sunya of
13. See Hillary Rodrigues, Krishnamurti's Insights (Varanasi, 2001), p. 73. 14. G. Srinivasan, Insights into Inward Consciousness (New Delhi, 1994), p. 99. 15. K. Satchidananda Murty, The Realm of Between: Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Simla, 1973), p. 76.