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The Jaina Theory of Liberation and the Non-absolute :: 245
Madhyamika dialectic, on the logical level, is purely negative, analytic." Above all the drstis there is prajñā (intuitional insight) which is the abandonment of all drstis.? What is grasped by the intuitional insight is purely a negation implying nothing positive. The position is again reduced to sheer nihilism. Hence what prajñā comprehends must be something positive which always escapes the grip of our ordinary knowledge. Affirmation in the form of permanence or momentariness must not be taken to be absolutely false but as a step leading to sūnya. In the same way negative prepositions perform the same function from the other end. None of the affirmative or the negative prepositions are totally false, but being analytical in nature they fail to give the complete nature of the sunya. They are false, as the Jaina declares only with respect to the whole reality-which means only a partial falsity. If they are partially false, they must be partially true. With this interpretation the negative function of the Mädhyamika dialectic can be said to have some value as leading towards the sūnya. The sūnya as indeterminate can only mean that it is beyond both the negative and affirmative prepositions, it can never mean an empty concept. Das Gupta has very correctly remarked: "This bhūtatathātā is neither that which is existence; nor that which is non-existence, nor that which is at once existence and non-existence, nor that which is not at once existence and non-existence; it is neither that which is plurality, nor that which is at once unity and plurality, nor that which is not at once unity and plurality. It is a negative concept in the sense that it is beyond all that is conditional and yet it is a positive concept in the sense that it holds all within it. It cannot be comprehended by any kind of particularization or distinction. It is only by transcending the range of our intellectual categories of the comprehension of the limited range of finite phenomena that we can get a glimpse of it. It cannot be comprehended by the
1. Ibid., p. 128 2. Ibid., p. 123
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