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Numerical Difference and Absolute Non-Existence
67
making up the constitution of a real is thus the result of a logical analysis of a real as it is. If one is not prepared to believe in this triple affirmation one has to assert that things are not real at all. Either pure negation or pure affirmation are the only alternatives left for acceptance. The former is the position of the Sūnyavādin and the latter is of Vedānta. Is the paradox greater in the Jaina view than in the two other systems? Is the Sūnyavādin, who dismisses the whole world of experience as an unfounded illusion, less paradoxical ? Is the Vedāntic view, which endorses the Sūnyavādin's repudiation of the whole world of pluralities, calculated to satisfy the abhorrence of paradox in a more satisfving manner ? The paradox is only apparent as it alone provides a satisfactory explanation of experience and thought. The criterion should be whether or not it succeeds to explain the world as we know it.
But a difficulty has been raised with reference to the triple character enunciated as the universal feature of reality. If persistence, cessation and birth were each of them identical with the substance of which they are predicated, then being identical with the same substance, all of them would be identical with one another. Thus persistence would be the same thing as cessation and birth, cessation would be identical with persistence and birth, and birth would be identical with cessation and persistence. So the triple character is reduced to an identical single mode. And if each of these modes were regarded as numerically different from the substance and also from one another, and if each of them were believed to be real, then again each of these modes would have triple character. An infinite vicious series would be inevitable as each of the triple modes would have another triple character and so on to infinity, unless the triple mode were severally and jointly asserted to be unreal characterization. Either a single mode in the place of the triple character. or an infinite series, or its unreality, is to be asserted. But the Jaina answers the critic by asserting the non-absolutistic position. So far as persistence etc. are regarded as identical with the substance, it is legitimate that persistence and cessation and birth should be regarded as identical. And if attention is concentrated on the aspect of difference of these modes from the substance and from one another, then each of them would have a triple
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