Book Title: Jain Philosophy
Author(s): Virchand R Gandhi
Publisher: Agamoday Samiti

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Page 268
________________ 239 the things that pass away still exist in an altered condition sornewhere. He may now generalize that nothing is annihilated ; that notwithstanding the changes that are visible everywhere, the world, taken as a whole, is permanent. Both generalizations are true from different points of view ; each by itself is an abstraction. When one learns to synthesize, he puts together the various aspects he has found of the world, and realizes that the integrality of truth consists in the indissoluble combination of all the possible aspects. The inherence of contrary aspects in a single idea or object seems impossible to the unsynthetic mind. Sankara the well-known Vedanta scholar, has fallen into a great error when he states that the Jain doctrine should not be accep ted, because “it is impossible that contradictory attributes, such as being and non-being, should, at the same tiine, belong to one and the same thing ; just as observation teaches that a thing cannot be hot and cold at the saine inonent." The Jains do not teach that a thing can be hot and cold at the same moment, but they do teach that a thing cannot be hot absolutly, and cannot be cold absolutely; it is hot under certain definite circumstances,' and cold under others. The Jain do not teach that being and non-being (of itself) should at the same time belong to one and the Same thing. What they teach is that in a thing Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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