Book Title: Sramana 2007 01
Author(s): Shreeprakash Pandey, Vijay Kumar
Publisher: Parshvanath Vidhyashram Varanasi

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Page 155
________________ 148 : Sramana, Vol 58, No. 1/January-March 2007 when the idea of a real.entity or being is dissected, it is found it refers to nothing : it is like peeling off an onion layer after layer and finally nothing is found underneath. So in order to become free, one should get rid of the notion that one is a real being or a substantial self, that one can enter into relations with others and that one can possess this or that, and that one can become or has not become something else. Buddhism thus teaches the way to nirvāņaor the experience of non-beingness in the absolute form, a non-relational (nirapekṣa) state of void or sūnya. According to the concept of vacuity, void or sūnya of Nāgārjuna's Mādhyamika school of Buddhism, "Everything is by its nature empty." For instance, agent and action are mutually dependent, therefore their independent existence cannot be demonstrated. So Nāgārjuna says, all relations and the forms of existence ultimately lead to void. Void transcends all causal relationships and could be termed as ultimate reality. And this void is said to be unconditioned, one Absolute Reality.15 Obviously, clinging to emptiness or void of Buddhism is as much an illusion as treating the objective reality of the temporal empirical existence of subject and object as a dreamworld or an unreal world or Advaita Vedānta. The Jaina concept of the Absolute alone seems to be realistic. References 1. Amặtacandra, Samayasāra, Kalasa X. 247. 2. Frank Van Den Bossche, "Existence and Non-Existence in Haribhadra Sūri's Anekānta-Jaya-Patākā," Journal of Indian Phi losophy, Vol. 23, 1995, p. 429. 3. Akalanka, Aștaśati, cited in Udai Chandra Jain, "Anekānta and Syädvāda," in Ahimsa International Silver Jubilee issue (New Delhi, 1998), pp. 53-55. 4. D.K. Goyal, The Path to Enlightenment : Svayambhū Stotra by Samantabhadra (New Delhi : Radiant Publishers, 2000), Verse 61, Foreword by Jagdish Prasad Jain :Sadhak,' p. 30. 5. Aptamimārsā, n. 19, chapter X, Verse 108.

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