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THE JAINA ATTITUDE
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It is our common experience that things persist as well as cease to persist. But if we stick to one side of the experience and reject the other as an illusion, we are led to formulate absolutist doctrines of universal eternalism, and universal nihilism. The Buddha rejected both these ends and left the problem unexplained. Mahāvīra accepted both the ends and explained the puzzle as originating from different mental attitudes, fostered by interests in the different aspects of the selfsame reality.
The problem of finiteness and infiniteness of the world (loka)' is explained with reference to substance, space, time and modes. The world is finite as regards its substance and space. Its spatial dimensions are finite. Its substance is finite in space. The world is infinite with reference to its temporal dimension and modal expressions. Thus it can be considered as both finite and infinite. The process of the world has neither beginning nor end, though it is limited in space which, in itself, however, is infinite.
The problem of the relation of body and soul is answered by Mahāvira in the following way:
Is the body, O Lord, (identical with the soul or is the body different from it?' The body, O Gautama, is (identical with the soul as well as
it is different from it.'3 The relation of body and soul is given as one of identity-cumdifference. The soul suffers from the injuries of the body inasmuch as it is identical with the body. It does not become extinct with the extinction of the body inasmuch as it is different from it as well.
The soul is not absolutely unchanging, and so it is liable to progress or regress. Moral endeavour is not inconsistent with this conception of soul. It is inconsistent with the doctrines of absolute staticity or absolute extinction. But this non-absolutist conception is free from this inconsistency. (The Buddha avoided both these absolutist extremes, as we have seen above, in order to justify moral endeavours.) Eternalism is as much inconsistent with moral endeavour as nihilism. But the Jaina theory does not endorse either eternalism or nihilism. The Buddha perhaps found self-contradiction in asserting both staticity and change in the selfsame entity with reference to identical space and time. But if experience gives this as a fact, we need not be afraid of accepting this as a truth. It is this finding of Mahāvira that inspired the whole philosophical development of the Jaina mind. If staticity means incapability of change, then certainly
1 Loka means the contents of that portion of the space (ākäsa) where the existence and movements of spirit and matter are possible. 2 BhSū, II. I. 90.
3 BhSü, XIII, 7. 495.
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