Samayasara

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

Page 29

Introduction/Premble to Chapters I & II
Samayasāra which, fortunately, is inherent in all of us. They are emphatic that omniscience is the condition as well as the result of perfection and advancement in philosophical enquiry cannot, by itself, bring about the final consummation.
Consequently the pure conscious principle (soul, self) can never be the object of an indirect/perceptual cognition. It can be apprehended directly, by an omniscient only. Thus anything that has been asserted in respect of the pure soul must have originally come from an omniscient,who could transfer his knowledge through the medium scriptural/verbal knowledge (śrutajñāna). This has been made clear by the author at the very beginning of the first chapter.
(3) The Inherent Purity of the Self
The third doctrine is regarding the innate potentiality of all souls to achieve final liberation/emancipation and the beginningless infection by perversity (mnithyātva). Jains, in agreement with other Indian philosophies, hold that purity and perfection is integral to the soul and self-realization is not a new creation in the sense of emergence of an absolutely unprecedented state. Yet the soul has been hindered from self-realisation which is the same as the discovery of its infinite glory, from eternity.
The hinderence comes from perversity (mithyātva) which has no beginning in time. It is there from all eternity. The question “Why a soul is inflicted with it" is as absurd as the question “Why should the soul exist?” The existence of the soul is an ultimate fact and the existence of perversity, coeval with it, is equally an ultimate fact to which no question of origination can be relevant. Mithyātva is there and it is not that we don't know its nature, its nature and functions are well known. We do not know the beginning because it has not beginning.
“I am this, I am of this, Mine is this everything that is non
1. Total-vision or omniscience can be defined as a pure and perfect (i.e. all
comprehensive and all harmonious) extra-sensory experience to which the whole universe of Reality is presented, in the form of a complete system, as it really is, in its entirety. Thus: consciousness of an omniscient directly embraces the totality of existence-corporeal as well as non-corporeal-in the form of a perfectly systematic unity as the contents of a single experience.
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