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RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE JAINAS ideas, this method of analysis in invaluable. But to call Being or 'Eternal Ens' the cause or the noumenon, or the absolute, and distiguish it from the effect, calling it the unreal, phenomenon, or relative, is pseudo-analysis. Doctrine of Manysidedness and Seven Modes
You can affirm existence of a thing from one point of view, deny it from another and affirm both existence and nonexistence with reference to it at different times. If you should think of affirming both existence and non-existence at the same time from the same point of view, you must say that the thing cannot be spoken of similarly. Under certain circumstances the affirmation of existence is not possible, of non-existence and also of both.
What is meant by these seven modes is that a thing should not be considered as existing everywhere, at all times, in all ways, and in the form of everything. It may exist in one place and not in another at one time. It is not meant by these modes that there is no certainty or that we have to deal with probabilities only as some scholars have taught. Even the great Vedantist Sankarācārya has possibly erred when he says that the Jainas are agnostics. All that is implied is that every assertion which is true, is true only under certain conditions of substance, space, time, etc.
This is the great merit of the Jaina Philosophy, that while other philosophies make absolute assertions, the Jaina looks ai things from all standpoints, and adapts itself like a mighty ocean in which the sectarian rivers merge themselves.
Jaina philosophy, therefore, is not the doctrine of illusion, nor of emanation, nor of creation. It is rather the doctrine that teaches the inexpugnability of various properties inextricably combined in a thing. Hence, the affirmation of only one property would be true so far as one side of the question is concerned; but it becomes false when it rejects other sides --- implying thereby that the very existence of that particular side depends on the existence of other sides. Jainism emphasizes at the same time the fact that at any particular moment it is
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