Samayasara

Author(s): Kundkundacharya, Jethalal S Zaveri
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 28

Sumayasăra
Introduction/Premble to Chapters I & II between the unity of being and plurality of attributes. A thing is one and many at the same time-a singularity and a plurality rolled into one, i.e., it is neither an absolute unity nor split-up into a irreconcilable-plurality. It also asserts, that there is no contradiction between identity and otherness, as they are not absolute characteristics but are only partial and limited and not complete and unqualified, Thus anekāntavāda-non-absolutism-is the law of the multiple nature of reality. It corrects the partiality of philosophers by supplementing the other side of Reality which escaped them.
Non-absolutism being the foundation of Jain philosophy, mutation (change) is as much real as permanence. Change or modification is a fundamental characteristic of all that is real. A substance is a substratum of infinite qualities and modes. Nothing can exist without being in some determinate way and the modes of a substance means its existence in a determinate state of being. Thus, assert Jains, the qualities (gunas) and modes (paryāyas) cannot be absolutely different from the substance nor can they be absolutely identical with it. The admission of the qualities and modes leads to the triple characteristics-existence, cessation and persistence-in the constitution of a real. This concept of Reality is only one which can avoid the conclusion that the world of plurality, which is the world of experience, is an illusion. Either the world is to be accepted as real or dismissed as an unreal appearance. The triple characteristics gives out the internal constitution of Reality. A real persists through time and thus has these three-past, present and future-temporal determinations. So a real is real for all time. A real which has no past and no future is a fiction and a non-entity.
(2) The Theory of Knowledge
The second important doctrine is associated with the theory of knowledge. Though the Jains agree with other schools that philosophical speculation is a necessary discipline of the mind which strengthens convictions and reduces doubts, they maintain that the ultimate or transcendental truth cannot be realized by philosophical discipline alone. Nor are the ordinary sources of knowledge adequate for the discovery of the ultimate truth, being subject to the limitations imposed by the senses. The plenum of knowledge can be attained by the development of a total-vision,