Some Aspects of Indian Culture

Author(s): A S Gopani, Nagin J Shah, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 58

49
Characteristics of Jinism
which stays on in and through its own qualities or modificatory changes. It (sar) stands under, supports and holds together the qualities and modificatory changes 18 which become manifest through originations and destructions in and through which the substance asserts and maintains its own existence and continuance at the time of its interaction with other things.
Reality or sat according to Jaioa Metaphysics has neither the beginning nor the end. It is always noted for its appearance and disappearance in the midst of permanence. At the first sight it appears to be a very peculiar doctrine, and it is so. According to HEGEL the nature of Reality is dialectical. It consists of thesis and antithesis harmonized and held together by synthesis. It can be, then, fairly admitted that this doctrine of HEGEL is fully reflected in the Jaina doctrine of Sat, which can also be compared to a biological principle of metabolism which asserts through the two opposite forces of anabolism and katabolism. And just so the Jaina Reality has got both the positive and negative aspects held together in a synthetic form by its own complex nature.
Such being the case of Reality according to Jaina metaphysics it follows that it should maintain as it does its identity and stability only through an incessant process of changes consisting of origination and disintegration -- identity in diversity and permanency through change. Stability and change are so interlinked with each other that they cannot be isolated though they can be differentiated from each other in thought and speech.
This triple nature of Reality19 has given rise to various other philosophical doctrines related to Jaina metaphysics according to which the ultimate reals are five in number
These ultimate reals are, to put in different terms, the primary elements which are at the basis of the cosmos. They are jiva, pudgala, dharma, adharma and akāśa, 2 0 or five Astikayas. Astikāya, again, is a technical term meaning spatial relation, which, is different from volume connected with matter. 21 Of these five Astikā yas, pudgala alone is mūrta and the others are amūrta even though they are Astikāyas or existences having spatial relations. So this world, at the foundation of which exist these reals, is neither exclusively composed of disconnected things without any link like the loose parts of a broken chain nor constituted of a single unity without any difference or dualism whatsoever. It is our common experience that it has both the elements of unity and difference. This universe appears merely as an entity when we view it simply from the standpoint of unity, dismissing temporarily from our mind the thoughts of mutual differences which exist between things and knowledge. This standpoint of Unity is no doubt comprehensive, but it does not help us in our practical life. For a solution of it we have to fall back upon the standpoint of difference. This is exactly what we very often say, a quarrei between a fact and a fable. This is also a different side of that great law that there is always unity in AS- 7