Jainism For Beginners Level 03

Author(s): Sayampurnashreeji
Publisher: Sayampurnashreeji

Page 86

"Oh!" everyone said, were all right. There was no more fighting. They felt happy and content that they were all right.
that truth is relative to the perspective (Naya) from which it is known. Furthermore, because reality is many sided & knowledge is true only from a limited perspective, all knowledge claims are only tentative (Syat) having the form, “X may be Y" rather than "X is Y."
The moral of the story is that there may be some truth to what someone says. Sometimes we can see that truth and sometimes we cannot because they may have a different perspective that we may not agree to. So, rather than arguing like the blind men, we should say, “Maybe you have your reasons." In Jainism, it is explained that truth can be stated in seven different ways. One should know the complete truth, and then analyze the truth from all different angles. So, you can see how broad our religion is. It teaches us to be tolerant towards others to their viewpoints. This allows us to live in harmony with people of different thinking. This is known as the Syadvada, Anekantavada, or multiplicity of viewpoints.
Like the blind men, each person perceives things from their own perspective. These perspectives are determined by many factors, including socio cultural conditioning, particular place, time, light, hopes, fears and, of course, subject to the limitation of our sensory receptors and reasoning power. A person seeking profit sees everything in terms of gains and losses: insecure people sees threats everywhere and a person devoted to God sees everything as God's blessed creation.
When it is understood that knowledge is limited by the particular perspective from which side it is achieved, it becomes easy to see that knowledge claims are conditioned by the limitation of the perspective that it assumes and should always be expressed as only tentatively true.
Anekantavada
According to Jain metaphysics, not only are there innumerable substances, each with innumerable quality, but each quality is susceptible to an infinite number of modifications. Clearly ordinary knowledge (nonomniscient) cannot comprehend this complex reality for ordinary knowledge is limited not only by the limited power of the senses & reason, but also by the perspectives adopted by the knower as well as by the conditions of space, time, light, & so on.
Emphasizing the limits of ordinary knowledge, Jainism developed the theory
Just as the blind men should have been more circumspect, saying for example, "Standing here, feeling the object with my hands, it feels like a winnowing fan. It may be a winnowing fan." So should everyone understand that their knowledge claims should be asserted only conditionally.
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