Book Title: Jain Philosophy and Modern Science
Author(s): Nagrajmuni
Publisher: Anuvrat Samiti

View full book text
Previous | Next

Page 148
________________ , 182 JAIN PHILOSOPHY & MODERN SCIENCE "O, Lord, Is the soul eternal or non-eternal" "Gautam," said Lord Mahavira, "the soul is eternal as well as non-eternal" "O, Lord", asked Gautam Munı "with what end in view can it be said that the soul is eternal as well as non-eternal?" "Gautam", replied Lord Mahavira, "from the point of view of substance the soul is eternal but from the point of view of different modes it is non-eternal."23 Lord Mahavira never looked upon any subject from exclusively one angle only He used to judge all things from different angles As will be seen in the above cited discussion between Lord Mahavira and Gautam Muni, it appears to be a contradictory statement that the soul can be eternal and non-eternal at the same time But looking at the explanation given by Lord Mahavira to this contradictory appearance of his words, one finds that he has expressed his ideas from different points of view and they are respectively correct in the context of those respective points of view in spite of their appearing to be contradictory. In the above dialogue the word, From the point of view of substance' bear reference to the soul itself. So putting the underlying idea of the above discourse in other words we come to the conclusion that from 23 Bhagwad Shatak 7-4

Loading...

Page Navigation
1 ... 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234