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The Jaina world of Non-living
Jīvāśca
5.3
The living beings are also a reality 5.3.
The term 'living' has already been explained earlier in the second chapter in 2.8). The word 'ca' drags the word 'Dravyāņi' from 5.2 to serve the proper meaning as above. 1. Q. The Vaišesikas put up their views here :
"The living one could be defined as that which has a conjunction with the general-cum particular quality of 'livingness'." A. This view is a dis-allowed concept. Its repudiation should be taken in the way similar to the case of repudiation of reality-ness as reality as stated earlier in aphorism 5.2. 2. Secondly, there will be contingency of flaws of infinite regression and loss of promise in adopting this concept. If the living is characterised by livingness, it will also have to be characterised by another living-ness. This chain will lead to infinite regression. If the livingness is said to be a self-proved concept in order to avoid infinite regression, there will be loss of promise in stating that an entity is characterised by conjunction with another entity. Thus, the living should also be taken as a self-proved entity like the livingness. Q. If it is said that the livingness is self-proved like the lamp, what is the harm if the living is also taken as self-proved ? The living and livingness are different entities and their attributes cannot be found in each other. There is no similarity between them. Hence, the living one cannot be self-proved like the livingness. Otherwise, it may lead to confusion. However, there is no confusion, hence there could be no flaws as above. A. This is not correct. It cannot be proved that the living and livingness are two different entities. Had there been a difference, the confusion could not have occurred. They are not different as they are not self-proved. This has been said earlier too.
Moreover, still there will be loss of promise as the Vaiseșika concept postulates that the attributes of an entity are not found in other entities. Had it not been so, the existential property of beingness' would not have been described to be found in realities, attributes and actions. If
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