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A SOURCB-BOOK IN JAINA PHILOSOPHY
145
pudgala-parāvartana are made of the addhākāla. The minutest division of kāla is samaya. It is indivisible. It can be described on tbe analogy of a hole in the kamalapatra or a hole in a piece of cloth.
If the 100 petals of lotus are kept one over another and if one is to pierce a needle so as to penetrate all the petals, it may appear that all of them have been penetrated simultaneously. But this does not happen. Every petal is pierced successively within the minutest fraction of time and that samaya which takes to pierce one petal is the unit.
As a strong man, you may tear a piece of cloth at once. It may appear that the piercing was done simultaneously, but this was not so. Every thread is torn at every fraction of time and that is the smallest unit of time.
In short, a piece of cloth is woven into large number of threads and each thread is constituted as the infinite points of cotton. When the piece of cloth is torn, every point of cotton and every thread needs to be torped separately and each requires an indivisible and minutest fraction of time and this is called samaya.
We may now mention the conventional measurements of time for the purpose of human activities from samaya, the smallest unit, to the largest unit of anantakālacakra. The indivisible minutest fraction of time
-one samaya Infinite number of samayas
--one avalikā 256 avalikās -one kşullaka bhava (the shortest life span)
2223 3773 avalikas
-one breath (inhaling and exhaling) 4446 3779 avalikās
| -one prāņa Sadhika 17 ksullaka bhava or-one breath 7 pranas
-one stoka 7 stoka
-one lava 381 lava.
-one ghațī (24 minutes)
Į Bhagavatī, 11, 11.
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