Lessons of Ahimsa and Anekanta for Contemporary Life

Author(s): Tara Sethia
Publisher: California State Polytechnic University Pomona

Page 78

John Koller, “Why Anekāntavāda is Important?”
Advaitins deny the reality of change, giving it merely the status of māyā, while affirming only the reality of the unchanging Brāhman/Ātman. On the other hand, the Buddhists deny the reality of the unchanging, declaring the unreality of Ātman (anātman) and affirms only the changing as real. From the Jain perspective, if there were no unchanging substance to undergo the modifications that involve arising, endurance, and decay, there could be no change. But since we experience change it cannot be denied that substances actually undergo change. Thus, in some way, both the Buddhists and the Advaitins must be right. Within the Advaitin's conceptual scheme, however, the Buddhists cannot be right because their contradictory claims are excluded by the claimed truth of the unchanging as the real. Similarly, from within the Buddhist conceptual scheme, the Advaitins cannot be right for their contradictory claims are excluded by the claimed truth of the changing as the real. Indeed, if taken at the same level and from the same perspective, even the Jains would see the Advaitin and Buddhist claims as contradictory and mutually exclusive. However, from the perspective of a higher, inclusive, level made possible by the ontology and epistemology of anekāntavāda and syadvāda, their claims can be seen as ekāntika, or partially true, and therefore not mutually exclusive contradictory claims.
In conclusion, Nayavāda supports the metaphysical doctrine of anekāntavāda as a way of thinking about existence as simultaneously both being and becoming. It demonstrates how opposing views are one-sided and limited because they are based on only one, or a limited number of, standpoints. In this way the use of nayas help us in avoiding the one-sided errors of identifying existence with either the permanence and sameness of being on the one hand, or with the ever-changing process of becoming on the other. Syādvāda grounds and supports anekāntavāda in the sense that it explains how a statement about something that is permanent, remaining identical with itself over time, and that is simultaneously impermanent, becoming something else, can be true. Syadvāda is essentially a theory of predication
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