Jaina Perspective in Philosophy and Religion

Author(s): Ramjee Singh
Publisher: Parshwanath Shodhpith Varanasi

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Jaina Perspective in Philosophy and Religion
the cause of mundane existence and Samvara is the cause of liberation. Everything else is only its amplification.
(3) Our conduct cannot be isolated from our way of life. Truth and valuation are inseperable. Samantabhadra in his Yuktyānuś sanam (Verse 15 ) says : “Without knowing the real nature of things, all moral distinctions between bondage and liberation, merit and demerit, pleasure and pain will be blurred.”
(4) For Plato, Saṁskāra and Bradley, philosophy, broadly, is the knowledge of reality for the logical positivist it is only 'linguistic analysis'. However philosophy, to be true, must be philosophy of life, where we do not have a part-view but the whole-view or world-view. "Idealism was unable to see the trees in the wood, while empiricism could not see the wood in the trees” said C. D. Broad ( Contemporary British Philosophy, Ed. J. H. Muirhead, Vol. 1, 1924). These are the two different ways of approaching the problem but they are not the only ways. Hence, we should see the world steadily and as a whole. If we do not look at the world synoptically, we shall have a very narrow view of it Purely critical philosophy is arid and rigid.
(5) The Jaina view of life known as anekānta (Nonabsolutism) is nearer to such a synoptic view. To quote Whitehead, such an non-absolutistic approach is “an endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted” (A. N. Whitehead : Process and Reality, 1929, p. 4). The function of philosophy is not merely academic pursuit of knowledge and reality, it also serves as a way of life. It has the dual purpose of revealing truth and increasing virtue so that it may provide a principle to live by and purposes to live for. Hence, C. E. M. Joad opinions that “We must achieve a synoptic view of the universe" (C. E. M. Joad : A Critique of Logical Positivism, 1950, p. 29).