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taken as absolute difference. Permanence means indestructibility of the essential nature (quality) of a substance. Change means origination and destruction of different modes. Reality is transitory as well as permanent, different as well as identical. No object can be absolutely destroyed, nothing can be absolutely permanent. The modes (paryāyas) change, whereas the essential characteristics (guņas) remain the same.
Our experience tells us that no object is absolutely identical. We experience this also that the differences are not absolutely scattered, Jainism accepts this commonsense view and maintains that the identity or permanence exists in the midst of all the varying modes or differences. There is no reason to call in question the reality of the changes or of the identity, as both are perceived facts. Every entity is subject to change and maintains its identity throughout its career. Thus, Reality is a synthesis of opposites-identity and difference permanence and change.
The Vedantist starts with the premise that Reality is one permanent universal conscious existence. The Vaibhaşika and the Sautāntrika believe in atomic particulars and momentary ideas, each being absolutely different from the rest and having nothing underlying them to bind them together. The Naiyāyika and the Vaiseşika hold particularity and universality to be combined in an individual, though they maintain that the two characters are different and distinct. A Real, according to them, is an aggregate of the universal, i.e., identity and the particular, i.e., difference, and not a real synthesis. The Jaina differs from all these Indian philosophers and holds that the universal and the particuler are only distinguishable traits in an object which is at once identical with and different from both. A Real, according to him, is neither a particularity nor a universality exclusively but a synthesis which is different from both severally and jointly though embracing them in its fold.
There are six ultimate substances or eternal Reals in the Jaina metaphysics : 1. Soul (jiva), 2. Matter (pudgala), 3. Medium of Motion (dharma), 4. Medium of Rest adharma), 5. Space (ākāśa), 6. Time (kāla). The souls are infinite (ananta) in number and each soul has innumerable (asankhyeya) indivisible parts (pradeśas).” By contraction and expansion of these parts the soul is capable of occupying different
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Ibid., 5.31. Astasahasri, pp. 147-8. Tattvartha-sutra, 5.8.
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