Sambodhi

Author(s): Dalsukh Malvania, H C Bhayani, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 95

Some Special Aspects of Jain Philosophy
(2) According to S. Gopalan it is the Jain doctrine of Kevalajñgoa which is unique to Jainism. “It is unique because in all other schools of Indian philosophy the sense organs and the mind are not considered as obstructions in the sense in which Jainism holds them to be obstacles for perfect perception's, so that “The Kevala--Jñana concept, from the point of view of Indian epistemology stands unique in that it is referred to as the consummation of all knowledge through the progressive removal of the obstructions caused by the sense organs and the mind"..
(3) Prof. P. T. Raju, among other things, draws attention to a distinct feature of Jain metaphysics when he writes:
The Jaina philosophy, it has already been said, is realistic and pluralistic. There is a plurality of objects and Jivas (åtmans) and all of them are real, and the objects of our knowledge also are real, but are not mere ideas. But the Jaina metaphysics is a metaphysics of substance. Everything, including action, is a substance. One may find the idea of action being a substance to be very strange, but it is found in the modern theory that the stuff of the universe is only process. The Jainas conceive any existence as a substance. Action exists and is, therefore, a substance. 10
(4) Satischandra Chatterjee and Dhirendramohan Datta draw attention to an aspect of the view of causation which seems to belong distinctly to the Jains.
Regarding all the four substances--space, time, dharma and adharma -- it should be noted that as causal conditions they all have a peculiar status. The causal conditions (kāraṇas) may be distinguished into three chief kinds, agent (as potter is of the pot), instrument (as the potter's wheel is of the pot) and material (as clay is of the pot). Space, time, etc., come under the category of instrumental conditions, but they should be distinguished from ordinary conditions of that kind, being more indirect and passive than ordinary instrumental conditions. Gunaratna gives them, therefore, a special name, apeksakārāņa. The stone on which the potter's wheel rests may be cited as a condition of this kind in relation to the pot. Space, time, etc., are similar conditions. 11
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(5) According to A. L. Basham, it is in the classification sensed beings, who possess only the sense of touch that
the Jain classification shows its most original feature. This great class is in turn divided into five sub-classes: vegetable bodies, which may