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Jaina Philosophy and Religion
on which these different systems of thought are founded and thereby achieves a just (right) synthesis of them all, giving them their due place in the harmonious whole truth. The all-embracing philosophy of the doctrine of standpoints (nayavāda) is the method of synthesis.
Knowledge which touches upon a thing or Reality in all its aspects is pramāņa, while knowledge which is content to touch upon one aspect of the same thing or Reality is naya. That is why naya cannot be independently called pramāna and yet it is not a no-pramāņa. A drop of an ocean cannot be called an ocean, nor can it be called no-ocean, but can be called a part of an ocean.' The tip of a finger cannot be called a finger, and yet we cannot even say that it is no-finger--for after all it is a part of a finger. Similarly, naya too is a part of pramāņa.
Whatever be the thing under consideration, the thought grasps it part by part and ultimately culminates in vast and all-comprehensive knowledge. Again, however complete be the knowledge relating to a thing, in practice this knowledge is invariably employed part by part. And this is the reason why it is in place to deal with naya separately independent of śruta (pramāna)—naya that is of the nature of thought which grasps the thing partwise and śruta that is of the nature of thought which grasps the thing in its totality,
The chief aim of the doctrine of naya is to look for the seed of compatibility among views that appear to be mutually contradictory but are not really so. So the doctrine of naya can be briefly interpreted as follows: It is a discipline which looks for the seed of real compatibility among views that appear to be mutually contradictory and which thus synthesises these views. For example, mutually contradictory views are found propounded concerning soul itself. Thus, at one place it is said 'the soul is one', at another place it is said 'the souls are many'. Now one-ness and many-ness appear to be mutually contradictory, and so the question arises: “Is this mutual contradiction among these statements real or not? If it is not real, Why?” The answer to this query has been found out by the doctrine of naya and the following is the synthesis it has worked out. Qua individual units the souls are many, but if the attention is fixed on the aspect of pure consciousness, they are one. Working out such syntheses,
1. If a drop of an ocean were regarded as an ocean, then the ocean except the drop
would be no-ocean or each and every drop of the ocean would be an independent ocean with the result that there would be crores of oceans in one ocean.
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