________________
Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
CARVĀKA MATERIALISM
35
instance, when any subject is seen, it is seen together with light. But nobody will conclude from this that light and the jar or the pen are identical. It is quite possible to argue that the relation between cognition and its content is one of illuminer and illumined. And that they are felt together is due to the fact that without the cognition of the one the other cannot be cognized. In other words, the relation may be one of means and end, condition and conditional. The arguinent of the Buddhist is the prototype of the argument of the Vedāntist which we have considered before. The Vedāntist has argued from the coincidence of the content and cognition to their necessary identity and integration. The Jain explained this by asserting the relation to be one of identity-in-difference. The same conclusion will follow from the Buddhist argument of necessary compresence.
4. The Cårvāka Materialism The Cārvāka philosopher denounces soul and the possibility of omniscience. The scriptures that exist contradict each other and thereby prove their own falsity.
The so-called jiva or ātman ( soul) is nothing but a temporary product of material elements. It was not before birth, nor will it continue to exist after death. There is no life hereafter.
The Jaina philosopher observes that the materialist's denial of soul as an independent principle of consciousness goes against the law of causality. The nature of consciousness is radically different from matter and so it cannot be the product of material elements. The effect must be essentially homogeneous with the cause and reducible to the latter in turn. The law of causality demands that the cause and its effect must be mutually reducible.1 Consciousness is not reducible to matter and hence cannot be a material product. Moreover, the existence of soul is proved by self-intuition (svasamvedana). We feel pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, which presuppose a conscious substance as their substra. tum. The materialist cannot deny self-intuition. He must accept cognition as self-cognized in order to cognize the object. It cannot be admitted that the cognition is cognized by another cognition, because the second cognition would require a third, the third a fourth, and so on ad infitum, leaving the object uncognized for ever. Nor can the materialist regard the cognition as cognized
1 Vidyānanda cites examples of such reducibility in the following passage : na ca
tegām parasparam upadanopädeya-bhāva-darsanam asiddham, Prthivyātmaka
candrakānta-suryakanta-kāstha-višeşebhyo jalānalayor utpatteh.--SŚP, p. 16. 2 sukha-duhkha-harşa-vişādādyaneka-pariņāmatmakasyätmatattvasya svasamve
dana-pratyakşena nirbādham anubhavāt.--SSP. p. 16.
For Private And Personal Use Only
