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THE JAINA ATTITUDE
25 vinayam (non-discrimination), annānam (agnosticism). The annāniyā (agnostics or sceptics), though they are able arguers, do not get beyond confusion and doubt (no vitigicchatinnā). The venaiyā (upholders of vinaya) believe truth to be untruth and exemplify what is good as evil.2 The akiriyāvāi (non-believer in action does not admit good or evil acts as influencing the future. He believes in the world as futile and fixed (vañjho niyao kasine hu loe). The kriyāvādins believe in actions, believe in suffering as due to oneself and not due to another, and also admit right knowledge and conduct as leading to liberation."
It is in the context of these doctrines that the attitude of Mahāvira is to be understood. The Jainas believed in soul as separate from the body and as persisting through different births. They believed in good and bad actions, and also in right faith, right knowledge, and right conduct as leading to final liberation. We have already reviewed the Jaina position. Mahāvira's beliefs were opposed to the heretical beliefs enumerated above. (Mahāvīra was not a sceptic, nor an agnostic. Nor so was the Buddha. Nor were they materialists. Both of them believed in such transcendental things as morality and final emancipation, howsoever much might they differ about their nature...) The Buddha certainly did not believe in a spiritual substance persisting through various births, and surviving in its purest form in liberation. But he believed in the world as suffering, and regarded liberation from this suffering as the only end worth pursuit. Nāma (consciousness) is different from rūpa (material form), and so dissolution of the body does not mean dissolution of the mind. The nāma (consciousness) originates from its own cause, and so its cessation depends upon the cessation of its ultimate cause which is avidyā, ignorance. Belief in final emancipation and means thereto is the peculiarity of all those systems which are opposed to materialism. The sceptic lies in between the believers of such transcendental things as morality and final emancipation and the materialists. And the same is the position of the agnostics. We have seen the nature of the agnostics as described in the Sūtrakrtānga. There we found that those thinkers who doubted everything and believed in nothing were called agnostics or sceptics. We also learn from the Buddhist sources about one Sañjaya Velatthiputta who, when asked about ultimate problems, refused to give definite answer. He
1 Ibid., I. 12. 2. 2 saccam asaccam iti cintayantā asāhu sāhu tti udáharantā.
--Ibid., I. 12. 3. 3 lbid., I. 12. 4 4 Ibid., I. 12. 7.
5 lbid., I. 12. II. 6 Cf. dukkham eva hi na koci dukkhito kārako na kiriyā ca vijjati atthi nibbuti na niblyuto pumā maggam atthi gamako na vijjati.
-Visuddhimagga, XVI. 90. : DNi, Sāmañña phalasutta (No. 2). JP-4
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