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On the Identity of the Liberated Jiva in Jainism
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identity as Cort has stated or perhaps it is because they lose their identity upon liberation. In any case, this is not the case according to many Jains. It has been said that upon liberation jīvas are like cups of water that mix together yet somehow retain their identity.24 Now we will see how that is possible. We have now seen that it is not uncommon for Jaina scholars to identify the jiva as one rather than many. Reasoning seems to suggest that the jīvas either lose their identity upon liberation or never had a unique identity to begin with, but many Jains insist that jīvas retain their identity. How is this possible? Leibniz's Law demands that the individual liberated jīvas have some discernability, or unique properties by which they can be differentiated. So what properties are unique to the individual jīva? The mundane jīvas clearly have discernable properties such as their unique bodies, but the liberated jīvas seem to be identical with one another. So the question becomes: do liberated jīvas have unique properties? There are two answers in the literature to this question: 1) it is maintained that jivas retain the form of their last body,25 and 2) it is maintained that the extrinsic properties of one's past history differentiate them.26 As will be demonstrated, the first of these two responses is philosophically problematic, though doctrinally sound; the second response is the most coherent response but will prove to be more complicated than it seems at first glance. Jivas are said to retain the form of the last body they occupied. This form functions as the property by which liberated jivas are differentiated. Liberated jīvas, from this perspective, are identical in nature, but differentiable from one another and therefore individuals. This response seems like a good solution to the problem raised above but it is rather complicated and warrants clarification. Jaina cosmological doctrine claims that upon liberation a jīva immediately migrates to the upmost portion of the cosmos, which has a distinct shape and size.?It is the fixed size of the home of the liberated jīvas that seems to force a position for the Jaina philosopher. At first glance it seems that the Jaina philosopher
