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The Jaina Theory of Liberation and the Non-absolute :: 243
not definable in the ordinary way." However limited the descriptions of the absolute may be, they cannot be absolutely false. The absolute is not absolutely beyond descriptions. The truth of the partial descriptions of the absolute is again due to something positive in the absolute itself, otherwise anything could have been predicated of it. The absolute is so constructed that no proposition is able to give its full picture. Moreover, if the absolute is only existence-universal (sattā sāmānya) and nothing else, then there remains nothing but the existence-universal which can be described. Hence the existence-universal must be taken to be complete description of the absolute which, thus, becomes perfectly describable. The conclusion from the above discussion is that the absolute is neither absolutely describable nor absolutely indescribable. To draw a distinction between the transcendental and empirical levels of existence just brings the two levels on the same footing under a common genus. The truths of the transcendental level become false on the empirical level and vice versa. This reduces the transcendentalism of Advaita Vedānta only to a partial truth.
Thus we see that what Advaita Vedānta thinks to be the one, immutable and inexpressible absolute comes out to be a vision of the Jaina's non-absolute viewed from the pure pount of view. Kundakunda's exposition of the soul from the pure point of view mostly agrees with the description of the absolute in Advaita Vedānta. Reality transcends both the trenscendental and the empirical levels of existence. Trancessendentalism and empiricism both give us only the partial views of reality. What is beyond these partial views is the true reality, as Kundakunda held. This reality is one and many, permanent and changing and expressible and inexpressible at the same time. The parmārtha or the non-absolute of the Jaina can yield all these views consistently.
1. Ibid., p. 304
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