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Practice of Brahmavihāra in Theravāda Buddhism
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145
Consciousness is empty
Although Sartre resists that all conscious episodes posit intentional objects, he also maintains that consciousness it-self is empty, there are no contents in it so that nothingness is literally in consciousness. He does not mean by this that phrase like 'having in mind' any container-contained relation. The word 'in' is not to be taken literally (contrast having x in one's pocket). He denounced this way of thinking that contents or images are literally in consciousness as being an instance of the illusion immanence. “A table is not in consciousness.. A table is in space, besides the window."6 From this it is quite clear that object cannot be in consciousness, but he says something more than this. According to Sartre there is nothing whatever in consciousness not even resemblances or representations of its intentional objects. This is most striking in his treatment of visualizing or mentally imaging.
Jaina philosophy also maintains that consciousness is a not container of object but at the same time it is neither static nor empty, because of svabhāva paryāya (intrinsic modes) and ananta catustaya (four-fold infinite inherent qualities) when I say “I', it means infinite knowledge, infinite intuition, infinite power and infinite bliss, which is an inherent attribute of the transcendental self as it is said "jñānadarśanātmika cetană"? that is to say that according to Jaina philosophy consciousness must have at least its basic inheren qualities and that if it does not have it, there would be no difference between consciousness and an object. More over what Sartre says is also self contradictory, as he maintains it to be superfluous it dilutes and scatters itself and never forget itself and again he says it is static and empty. In the light of Jain metaphysics consciousness always has its attributes of cognition and is therefore never empty or static.
III Nothingness
In addition to his concern with being, Sartre is also much concerned with non-being or nothingness. According to Sartre,
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