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Haribhadra, Tainism and Yoga
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outlook as he must have realized that immortality lies in universality and death in narrowness. (Yo vai bhūmā tadamstam yadalpas tanmart yam). His mental and spiritual vision of the universal truth underlying all religions and philosophies made him see at once the narrowness of secterianism. He could not tolerate any narrowness and to get rid of it, he worked all his life. He preached universal outlook, he wrote for integration and he worked for the same all his life. That was his mission and he completed it by all the forces at his command.
Impress of Jainism
Apart from the dramatic incidence and changover to Jainism, there are sound causes which must have attracted Haribhadra to Jainism. Even if he had studied Jainism in details only after becoming a Jain he seemed to have found a congenial atmosphere in Jainism even before. He must have found certain basic concepts in Jainism very attractive as they must have been to him after his heart's liking The formost among them might have been the Jain theory of Syādvāda. This theory is one of the grandest and perhaps the greatest contribution of Jainism to philosophical thoughts and theories all around the world. Shri Kapadia succintly explains it thus, “The word Anekāntavāda can be split up into four parts 'an', 'eka', Santa', and 'vada'. These respectively mean 'not', 'one', 'a side' or 'an end' and a statement or exposition. Thus Anekāntavāda stands for a many-sided exposition."4 Syadvāda is known as Anekāntavāda too and similar other names too. But these two terms are more explanatory of this theory of Jainisin. It expounds the theory of relativity in philosopbical thoughts and emphasises the relative truthfulness of all philosophical theories even though each theory may propound the ultimate truth from its own view-point. In short, it narrates philosophical relativity and teaches tolerance, patience and understanding all theories and thoughts. This is the fundamental necessity for development of all thought and so Syādvāda opens up a wide scope for philosophical theorization. "The sphere of Anekāntavāda is unlimited. For, not only epistemological discussion but even metaphysical question and an ethical one too, come within its domain." Haribhadra's yearning for knowledge and truth must have found a fountainhead of inspiration in this great theory of Jainism and should have found solace in it in the face of rampant secteriapism of his times. The beauty of Haribhadra's character lies in the fact that even though much benefitted by Jainism he refused to be tied down to Jainism alone and accept all that was there in Jainism. He was the true and sincere searcher after truth and unreservedly accepted truth from whatever source he found it and rejected unhesitatingly all that he deemed to be fallacious. He made no exception in this and spared not even Jainism, the religion
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