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JAINISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
of the highest kind of self-denying asceticism. In Samadhi, or rather the attainment of it, stress is not laid so much on posture, breathing and the like, as on the purification of the heart from the dirty agitations of sensuality, and the controlling of the appetites. Everything of the world has to be given up, hearth, home, wealth, relations, clothes-even the loin cloth. If a single link (knot) remains to connect the mind with the outer world, the turning of attention inwards is not complete, and salvation is also not possible then.
IV
The Jaina doctrine is known as the Syadvada Siddhanta (Philosophy of Standpoints) because it bears reference to diversified points of view. Unwary metaphysicians, who ignore the philosophy of standpoints generally come to grief when studying the soul nature. They proceed from just one point of view, and deliberately turn down all others, howsoever natural and forcible. In Jainism the advice of the Teachers is that you should study the soul from all the natural standpoints, and then sum up the results of the investigation, without omitting or ignoring any point of view. Jainism is called the Doctrine of Anekantavada (many-sidedness or relativity) for this reason.
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Sometimes seeming contradictions are encountered in this method, and many an easy-going thinker is turned away from Truth, because of them. The advice of Jainism to all such people is to insert the word 'syat' (signifying from one point of view) before all contradictory statements, in the summing of conclusions, and the trouble would be ended. For instance, the statement 'S is P,' may at first sight seem to clash with the statement 'S is not P'; but if the two are made from two different standpoints, they may both be correct and reconcilable. If S in the above sentence stand for the soul, and P for perishability, it is true to say of the embodied soul, that is say, of a particular man, that he is perishable; but
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