Reals on the Jaina Metaphysics

Author(s): Harisatya Bhattacharya
Publisher: Shatnidas Khetsy Charitable Trust Mumbai

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Reals in the Jaina Metaphysics
Real is not the one and the non-dual Praksti of the Sāmkhya philosophy, but that the non-psychical Reals are more than one in number. The Jaina's are one with the Nyāya-Vaiseșika school of thinkers that there is an infinite number of conscious Reals on the one hand and on the other, there are the unconscious Reals, Matter-stuff and Time. But the Jaina's and the Nyāya-Vaiseșika's have their differences also. According to the Nyāya-Vaiseșika, Akāśa is a kind of Matter-stuff, while the Jainas contend that it is not a material Real but an independent Reality which we otherwise know as Space. The Nyāya-Vaiseșika maintains that Dik or point of direction is a Real as well as Manas or the principle of attention. The Jaina philosophers, on the contrary, urge that these are not separate Reals but that the former is included in the principle of Akāśa or Space, and the latter, in Pudgala or Matter.
Lastly, the Jaina thinkers differ from the Nyāya-Vaiseșika and for the matter of that, from all other schools of Indian thought in admitting two other unconscious Reals, the Dharma and the Adharma which, they say, are the two passive principles, helping the Motion and the Rest of the moving and the resting substances respectively.