________________
Samayasāra
is presupposed by the Jain doctrine of karma.
Upayoga (consciousness) is the defining characteristic of a soul. It is a complex of two cognitive faculties; knowledge is the determinate consciousness (jñāna) and intuition is the indeterminate consciousness (darśana). Thus, knowledge is inherent in the soul. In the worldly life, it is obscured by the karmic veil. It is imperfect when the veil is partially removed and pure and perfect when it is totally destroyed. Absence of knowledge is as unnatural to the soul as darkness is to the sun. Of the five classes of knowledge, enumerated in verse no. 7.12, the sensuous and scriptural (mati and śruta) are indirect as they are born with the help of the senseorgans and the mind. The other three are direct and independent of any external instrument.
Chapter - 7
Mati-jñāna-perceptual or sensuous cognition-is born with the help of the sense-organs and the mind. It includes intellect, memory, conceptual planning etc..
Śruta-jñāna originally meant knowledge embodied in the scriptures and Jains regard their scriptures to contain all the truths verbally expressed. But now it is accepted as articulate knowledge-verbal expression and means of transfer of knowledge from one person to others. In a wider sense, it is held that a soul could never be devoid of sensuous and verbal knowledge. Even the one-sensed organisms such as plants, are held to be possessed of these two. To be devoid of these is to lose the nature, soul and become non-soul.
The Jains believe in the capacity of the soul to know all things irrespective of temporal and spatial distance, i.e., the soul is inherently capable of cognizing all things with all these characteristics-past, present and future. The other three classes of knowledge are completely free from the dependence upon sense-organs, mind or any other external instrument. By clairvoyance-visual intuitionavadhi-jñāna, one can intuit things which have shape or form (rūpī).
Manaḥparyaya-jñāna, i.e., mind-reading is the revealer of the objects thought of by the minds of people, i.e. it intuits the states of mind that is engaged in thinking.
Omniscience (kevala-jñāna) is the consummation of all
Jain Education International
-:163-0
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org