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TULSI-PRAJŇA
the human curiosity would not be satisfied, whereas the man of the period was in search of an acceptable explanation of the mystery of life & death, the universe & all else. In fact the man wanted to know the truth-the enlightenment, as it may be called, amongst all the existing "isms", because all the schools at that time were busy in trying to cut down each other & judged each other's wisdom accordingly.
Bhagavan Mahavira put forward a broad vision and an all-embracing philosophy. He said that any fundamentalism and fanaticism, or considering one school as the only and final truth cannot be true. 4
It is laid down in Sutrakṛtānga that to praise one's belief and degrading the other's faith leads that absolutistic person (Ekāntavādī) to the continuous and unending circle of life and death. Bhagavān Mahavira has said that insisting on a single faith and belief as the only true faith and belief is the biggest hindrance in the path of the search for truth. A fixation of belief is attachment and where Whole truth there is attachment, the whole truth cannot be seen. can be seen only by a detached person-A person with attachment, even if he is able to see the truth, contaminates the truth, because of his attached vision. The defect of believing in singleness of his own faith, makes the vision untrue, and if that fixation be absent, the same truth will be visible to him as truth. One cannot arrive at truth, by disowning others' truth, simply because they are other people's truth. Truth cannot be approached through disputes.
Philosophic Background
Anekāntavāda is basic to structure of Jain metaphysics. It seeks to reorient our logical attitude and asks us to accept the unification of contradictions as the true measure of reality. It is easy to unlock the mystery of the paradoxical Reality.
The law of Anekanta affirms that there is no opposition between the unity of being and plurality of aspects. The identity of a real is not contradicted by the possession of varying attributes. No one can deny that light, for instance, produces multiple effecte, viz., the expulsion of darkness, the illumination of the field of perception, radiation of heat and energy and so on. If a plurality of the energies can be possessed by a self-identical entity without offence to logic, why should the spectre of logical incompatibility be raised in the case of a permanent course possessing diverse powers. The law of Anekanta affirms the possibility of diverse and even contradictory attributes in a unitary entity. A thing is neither an absolute unity nor a split-up into irreconcilable plurality. A thing is one and many
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