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The Jaina Philosophy of Non-Absolutism
conviction to an enormous number of men and women who respectfully decline to be satisfied with their negative findings, whether qualified or unqualified. As regards the position of the advocate of flux (Sautrāntika) the difficulty alleged does not find a satisfactory solution from him as well. In this system all existents are believed to be momentary in duration. A moment is the indivisible atom of time which stands absolutely detached and discrete from its antecedent and consequent units. If an existent can occupy only such a moment, it cannot function as a cause. Exercise of causality is possible either in succession or non-succession, but both are incapable of being predicated of a momentary real A ‘momentary' has no duration and consequently no succession. Simultaneous production of effects is also not admitted by the Buddhist fluxist. Moreover, absolute affirmation of a characteristic. reality or unreality, eternity or noneternity, implies by the very force of its inherent opposition the negation of the opposite characteristic. So if a thing is affirmed to be real or momentary the predication is not of a simple characteristic, but of a complex one. The thing is not only real but not not-real not only momentary but also not not-momentary. This militates against the absolutist standpoint of predication of simple characteristics.
If things were real in an absolute sense there would be no causation, as it is possible if only an event which was non-existent is brought into existence. But an existent by its very nature, that is to say, irrespective of such external conditions as time, space and the like, is not in need of the services of a cause. If, on the contrary, the effect were unreal in an absolute sense it could not any more be called into existence, since an unreal fiction such as a barren woman's son or a square circle is never found to leap into existence. The Sūnyavādin may contend that the whole show of causal order is only an appearance and the effects that are seen to be produced are as unreal as the so-called fictions. No reliance, again, can be placed upon experience, they would plead, as experience in dream also exhibits the same characteristics as so-called normal experience; and the objects perceived or inferred are nothing but chimeras. So the objection on the ground of the failure of causation is futile so far as the sceptics are concerned. But this denial of causation again involves
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