Outlines of Jainism

Author(s): S Gopalan
Publisher: Wiley Eastern Private Limited New Delhi

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Mind
THE Jaina view of mind (manas) is different from that of the
I other schools of Indian philosophy as it does not consider mind as one of the sense organs. All the other schools hold the view that mind is also a sense organ. According to Nyāya-Vaiseșika pleasure and pain, to be experienced, requires an 'internal organ' (antahkarana) and that is the mind. A similar status of antaḥkaraña is accorded to mind by the Mīmāṁsaka system. In regard to the cognition of the self and its attributes it functions independently and in regard to the perception of the objects of the external world it acts in co-operation with the external senses. The basic Sāṁkhya view is the same. It emphasizes the twin-functions of the mind the sensory and the motor. In this aspect it partakes of the functions of the organs of knowledge (sensory) and organs of conation(motor). In Vedānta also the mind is referred to as an internal organ.
The important point of distinction between Jainism on the one hand and the other schools of Indian philosophy on the other, is accountable from the diametrically opposed views held by them in regard to epistemology. Since the other schools considered knowledge born of the contact of the sense organs with their respective objects to be due to direct perception, knowledge derived through no direct contact between the objects and the senses but whose certainty could none the less be asserted, had to be attributed to the instrumentality of some organ other than the five sense organs (indriya). To be consistent with their own theory they had to conceive of the 'sixth organ' as also of the same kind as the other five