New Dimensions in Jaina Logic

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

Page 87

Conditional Dialectics
79
Momentariness changes into smooth passing from one state to another without any gap. Origination and cessation become meaningless. In the language of the traditiona! karma doctrine the causal concatenation can be detected in the phenomena of the fruition or disappearance of karma. The changes taking place in the gross atomic aggregates also appear as subject to causality. However, in the changes that are spontaneous and intrinsic, the principle of causality is not applicable in the ordinary sense of the term. In Jaina ontology it is averred that the colour of an atom definitely changes after the lapse of a definite period, the cause of such change being undefined. An atom is here governed by its own intrinsic nature. The instantaneous modality (artha paryāya) of an atom is beyond the range of the principle of causality. A substance undergoes change every moment. The reality of the present moment can remain intact in the succeeding moment provided the former could mould itself in consonance with the latter. The nature of the instantaneous mode (artha paryāya) has found expression in the following traditional verse--
Anādinidhane loke, svaparyāyāḥ pratikşaņam/ Utpadyante vipadyante, jalakal!olavajjale//
'In the substance, which is without beginning and without end, the modes arise and vanish by themselves every moment like the waves that emerge and merge in the ocean without interruption.'
The doctrine of causality stands exposed in the light of the doctrine of viewpoints (nayas) thus
The doctrine of causality finds its proper place and exposition in the pantoscopic, analytic and the momentary viewpoints (that take note of the prolonged mode).
The doctrine of causality assumes quite a different meaning that is tantamount to its abrogation in the verbal, etymological and functional viewpoints. An effect arises by its own nature spontaneously according to these viewpoints. An effect cannot depend on anything else for its origination. It is meaningless to say that a selfcreated object has a cause that is something other than itself. When the cause and effect are identical, it is redundant to assert a relationship tertium quid between the two. It follows, therefore, that an effect arises spontaneously and intrinsically from and by itself independent of anything outside it.12