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A SOURCB-BOOK IN JAINA PHILOSOPHY
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fore, according to the Yogācāra, reality is mostly mental in nature. It is vijñāna, and ātman is the expression of vijñāna, although there is no permanent Ātma. Vijñānavādins are generally considered to be a subjective idealists who give prominence to mental states and to the external works. The mental states are real and external world is only an expression of mental states. Vijñänavādins had to posit an objective conception of the storehouse of consciousness. It is ālayavijñāna.
In this way, we find discussion of the conception of self from different stages and gradually it has reached the idealistic position of the conception of the self as we find in the vijñānavāda. In this, the self is primarily mental and expressing mental states. Eminent philosophers like Dharmakirti, śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla tried to present this idealistic conception of the self in terms of vijñāna, yet not deviating from the original stand of Kșanikavāda.1
In the Buddhist tradition, all the schools of thought have presented their own views concerning the soul as cittasantāna' (the stream of consciousness). The vijñāna-advaitavādins maintain that there is nothing except vijñāna and the self is considered as a stream of mental states and self that is real. The physical states are subsummed under the general conception of vijñāna.2
In the Buddhist philosophy there is no discussion about the specific relation of citta vijñānasantati or Jiva. We cannot, therefore, say whether self have any reference to the states of bodily existence, however in some of the works like Visuddhimaggo there are reference to the bodily states and it is possible that the mental states like the pleasure and pain have relation to bodily states,
We have already said that in the Sāṁkhya-Yoga, Jaina thought and others there is a view that in the rebirth the Sūkşmaśarīra moves from one body to the other. Similar description we find in the Digghaknikāya about the gandharya. The description goes th who wants to go from one life to the other after death, has to wait for seven days with gandharva. In the kathāvatthu there is a discu.
1 (a) Pramānavārtika 2, 327.
(b) Tattvasangraha kī hahirarthaparikşā, pp. 550-82. 2 Santānāntara Siddhi Dharmakirti has discussed it in this book, 3 Visuddhimaggo-14, 60; 17, 163,
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