Religion and Culture of the Jains

Author(s): Jyoti Prasad Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

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RELIGION & CULTURE OF THE JAINS
is caused by the immediately antecedent psychic state of the same subject and, similarly, a physical state has its origin in its own preceding physical state. Both are independent, yet they are inter-dependent, the relationship being purely external; the one is the instrumental, determining or circumstantial (nimittakartr) cause of the other, and vice versa.
This theory emphasizes principally the causal interrelation between soul and non-soul, between the psychical and the physical, between mind and matter. Without this concept, it would be difficult to fix moral responsibility--no one could be held responsible for his or her own conduct. If there is anything like moral responsibility and if the conduct of a person is capable of a moral evaluation, that conduct must be the intimate expression of his or her personality. To revert to the original question of niścaya and vyavahāra standpoints, the former concentrates on the soul, the upādāna or the substantial cause, and the later on the nimitta, the instrumental, circumstantial and determining causes which have their rise in things other than the soul itself. It is, perhaps, why a Jaina mystic, who concentrates on the upādāna and views things from the niscaya point of view, holds himself and himself alone responsible for all his spiritual and moral flaws, aberrations and shortcomings, and is ever busy in correcting himself. He relies mainly on his own personal spiritual, effort (ātma-puruşārtha), as a means to accomplish self-purification and ultimate liberation.
Sapta-bhangī (Seven Modes of Predication)
Connected with the nayas is the seven-combinational mode of predication (sapta-bhangi-nyāya) which is also a pecularity of Jaina logic. When we speak of a thing as existing we mean that it exists in its own substance (dravya), space (kşetra), time (kāla), and essence (bhāva). Without a clear conception of this quadruplet pertaining to a thing we cannot conceive of that thing as an existential reality. Thus, from the point