New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

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

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New Dimensions in Jaina Logic
denuded of its reality. It is indeed the intrinsic nature of a real to be possessed of such opposed attributes and if so why should an attempt be made to deny its reality, by getting ourselves entangled in the labyrinth of imaginary contradictions. As Dharmakirti puts it, who are we to deny what commends itself to the objects themselves? What should exercise our mind is the search for the source of those oppositions and the conditions of their synthesis. The philosophy of non-absolutism made such search and found that existence and non-existence go together. Affirmation without negation and negation without affirmation is never possible. Affirmation is as much an attribute of a real as the negation. Existence is affirmation and non-existence is negation. The intrinsic nature of a substance is the source of existence while the extrinsic nature of a substance is the source of non-existence. The substance of earth of which a pot is made is its own substance. Similarly the pot has its own space, time, colour and shape. A pot exists with reference to its own substance, space, time and modes. But it is non-existent as alien substance, space, time and modes. This relative estimation is a principle of synthesis. A pot does not poth exist and not-exist with reference to identical factors of reference. Existence and non-existence as mutually opposed attributes do certainly exist simultaneously in the same object, but the basic conditions of the two (viz. existence and non-existence) are not identical. The principle of relativity points to the way of synthesis and testifies the reality of co-existence.
Ācārya Akalanka has mentioned a number of reasons for the admission of existence and non-existence. A pot exists with reference to its own nature, it does not exist with reference to an alien nature. This argument leads us to investigate the meaning of 'own nature' and 'alien nature'. Akalanka's reply is--the own nature refers to the thing that is responsible for the application of the ‘pot concept' and the 'pot word', and what is not amenable to such usage is the alien nature. The affirmation of the own nature and the denial of the alien nature establish the reality of a thing. If the alien nature viz. a piece of cloth, is not excluded from the own nature viz. the pot, the word 'pot' would be applicable as designation to all things. And in spite of such exclusion, if the own nature of the pot is not cognised, the latter would be a non-entity like a hare's horn.
The specifically intended pot again passes through a number of phases. Any one among these phases is the own nature while the preceding and succeeding phases are its alien natures.