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REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE
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impossible to express in words this complexity of truth (though possible to realize it in consciousness), for words always take for expression more moments than one.
This teaching is also known as the doctrine of manysidedness (anekantavāda). For instance, the universe is eternal as well as non-etemal. If the manifestations, modifications, developments and activities are left out of consideration, what remains of the universe is eternal. If merely those modifications, etc., are taken into consideration, that side of the universe (which is not a different thing from the universe, but only a different aspect) is 101-eternal. That is the only way of coming to a correct understanding and definite knowledge.
The doctrine of the Jainas known as Syādvāda or Anekantavada, it is proper to affirm, in the words of a writer in America :
is competent to descend into the utmost minutiae of metaphysics and to settle all the vexed questions of abstruse speculation by a positive metliod (not merely asserting 'na iti, na iti,' not so, not so).lo settle at any rate the limits of what
i is possible to determine by any method which the human mind may be mnoually supposed to possess. It promises to reconcile all the conticing schools, not by inducing any of then neresuarily lo abandon their favourite ‘standpoints,' but by proving to then that the standpoints of all others are alike tenable, or, at least, that they are representative of some aspect of truth which under some modification needs to be represented; and that the Integrality of Truth consists in this very variety of its aspects within the relational unity of an all comprehensive and ramilying principle.".
Gunaratana Súri, the commentator of a Jaina work on Comparative Philosophy says : "Although the various schools of philosophy, through sectarian bigotry, differ from and contradict one another, still there are certain aspects of truth in them which would harmonize if they were joined into an organic wholel. For instance, the Buddhists advocate momentariness of things; the Sankhyas maintain eternality; Naiyāyikas
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