New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

Author(s): Mahaprajna Acharya, Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Today and Tommorrow Printers and Publishers

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Jaina Logic of Philosophical Period
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must obviously be wrong. Either the doctrine of universal flux is false or the philosophy of unchanging eternality must be so. Both of these cannot be a true estimate of reality. The Vaišesika philosophers accept the independent existence of the universal (sāmānya) and particular (visesa) and as such they recognise the validity of the standpoint of substance as well as that of modes. But their postulation of the universal and the particular as absolutely two independent facts makes their philosophy a false doctrine, being only a partial and truncated estimate of reality. The Buddhists and the Vaisesikas consider the Samkhya doctrine of pre-existence of the effect in the cause as a false doctrine and the Samkhyas consider the formers' pre-non-existence of the effect in the cause (asatkāryavāda) as an absurd hypothesis. All these theories are true in their own perspectives. None of these is an absolutely false doctrine. They are false only so far as they are exclusively postulated. Relatively interpreted none of these is false. A jar is not absolutely different from the earth, and as such it may be viewed as identical with the latter. The jar, of course, does not pre-exist in the earth before it actually takes the form of a jar. The jar, in fact, has come into existence on the assumption of the shape of jar by the earth, and as such it is different from the earth. Thus from the point of view of the identity and difference or the universal and the particular, none of the statements (vaktavyatā) are untrue.28
There are as many standpoints or ways of approach as there are ways of speech. And there are as many heterodox doctrines, i.e. divergent views, as there are standpoints.29. Every philosophy is a standpoint at best, being a view of the real from a particular angle of vision. No particular thought is complete, but it acquires completion when consistently connected with other thoughts. Thus viewed, no exclusive kind of thinking is true nor any relative mode of thought is untrue. The question arises: if the individual exclusive proposition is false, wherefrom would the sum total of such propositions derive their validity? A congregation of false beliefs is necessarily an archangel of untruth. How could that totality be a philosophy, perfect and full. Acārya Samantabhadra has very astutely formulated the reply by asserting that all the possible alternatives, consistently construed, are bound to give glimpse into the whole truth, capable of discharging all the functions of a real in its completeness. No rational proposition can be absolutely untrue. Shorn of its exclusiveness, it becomes an exponent of truth, which is tolerant of other co-ordinate rational propositions. 30