Jaina View of Life

Author(s): T G Kalghatgi
Publisher: Jain Sanskruti Samrakshak Sangh Solapur

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Juina View of Life
separate facts of internal experience." Mind, in the popular thought, is not simply a subject in the logical sense, but a substance in real being, and the various activities of the mind are its expressions or notions. But this involves, he says, some metaphysical presuppositions. For him, mind is a logical concept of internal experience.18 The Abhidhänarājendra mentions that the word manas has a functional significance, because it describes the functions of the mind like thinking, imagining and expecting." And from this functional signjficance of the mind the structure of the mind is inferred. The Jaina thinkers make a distinction between two phases of the mind dravya manas and bhāva manas (manah dvividham drayyamanah bhāva-manas ca). In the Višeşāvas yakabhāşya, we get a description of the two phases of the manas. The material mind, which may be called the mental structure, is composed of infinite, fine and coherent particles of matter meant for the function of mind-dravyataḥ dravyamanaḥ. It is further described as a collection of fine particles which are meant for exciting thought processes due to the yoga arising out of the contact of the jiva with the body.18 In the Gommațasāra : Jiva-kānda also there is a description of the material mind as produced in the heart from the coming of mind molecules like a full blown lotus with eight petals.
Such a description of mind as dravya manas and bhava manas, the structural and the psychical aspect, can be compared to the description of mind given by some modern philosophers. C. D. Broad, in his Mind and its Place in Nature presents a similar view. It is a modification of the instrumental theory according to which mind is a substance
16. Wundt : Physiological Psychology, tr. by Titchner, Introduction
p. 3. 17. Abhidhănarājendra, Vol. VI, p. 74. 18. Vis eşāvas yakabhāşya 3525; A. Mā.;and Abhidhānarājendra Vol. VI,
p. 4, Commentary : tad yog yair mananayog yair mano varganabhyo
grhitair anantah pudglair nirvrtitam tad dravyamano bhanyate. 19. Gommațasāra : Jiva-aāņda. Verse 443.