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A Vista of the Path
of analysis for the senses and intellect and, thence, a way of living in accordance with philosophical and spiritual values; while niscaya is the authentic attitude, the one thing needful, that which pierces through the envelope of temporality and goes straight to the essence of that which is under consideration, beyond all form and appearance. Through niscaya the substance is apprehended in its pure essential selfhood, without distinction, and in this apprehension the one apprehending and that which is apprehended or, we may say, the knower and the known are only one. This way of approach applies, first and foremost, to the jiva (ātman) in its ultimate Reality and leads, if one may so express it, to a movement of enstasy. Niścaya is also called by Acarya Kundakunda: śuddha-naya and paramartha-naya.14 These two ways of viewing, vyavahāra and niscaya, are inextricably itertwined for one desirous of attaining realisation of the ätman; that is to say, one must advance by stages and, in the beginning at least, one cannot dispense with an analytical approach before arriving at the threshold of being. 15 Those who are content to remain on the level of the empirical, the palpable, the thinkable and the discursive do not go beyond the level of vyavahāra. Only those who search for the purest ultimate, that is to say, the sages, succeed in viewing everything in the light of niscaya.16
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A - Ratnatraya: The Three Jewels
These are Three Jewels which comprise in fact just one. The Scriptures insist that they cannot be separated, that one cannot possess one of them without possessing the others. Studying them one by one,
14 Cf. e.g. SamSa 11; 12; 14; 141; ibid., 8; 43; paramartha can also denote the Supreme Reality, cf. e.g. SamSa 151; 152.
15 Ibid., 8.
Jain Education International
16
Ibid., 11-12. For a study on the subject, cf. JSK II, pp. 551-568. We are going to encounter these two angles of vision frequently in the DravSam and the SamSa. Generally there is first a consideration of some object according to vyavahara and then according to niscaya, but certain texts reverse this order, e.g. Drav Sam 7.
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