Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 1

Author(s): Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology & Ahimsa Mujjaffarpur

Page 133

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VAISHALI INSTITUTE RESEARCH BULLETIN NO. I
point of fact one necessarily ignores the number of individuals when one moves away from one to another. One experiences a jar, a table, a chair and so on and so forth. But the experience of chair is shoved into the background when one experiences the table. These individual facts are even found to come into being and cease to be. So existence cannot be their essential character. Furthermore whenever we perceive an individual fact, we perceive its existence. The individuals vary, come into existence, and pass out of existence and in all our experience existence is the constant factor. Constancy must be the determining criterion of reality. So the plurality of evanescent facts that we come across cannot claim existence as their essential character. Whatever is existent must have existence as its inalienable character and cannot cease to be existent. But the phenomenal world is found to leap into being and cease to be. So the phenomena cannot be existent in their own right. Their existence is only a borrowed reflection. The numerical difference of entities again involves . contradiction. They must be one in respect of existence and can be many only in so far as they differ from existence. Difference from existence is tantamount to non-existence. Thus existence is found to be the only reality and plurality must be denounced as false pretenders. Furthermore existence must be identical with consciousness because unconscious existence cannot certify its reality. Uncertified reality has no proof and is thus bound to be relegated to the sphere of non-being. We affirin existence because we are aware of it. But it may be argued, well ! if we cannot do away with consciousness, let it be posited as the sole reality. But consciousness cannot be other than existence as this will amount to the admission of consciousness as non-existent. Consciousness must be an existent fact and as brute existence is bound to be an unproved assumption, existence and consciousness must be rolled into one principle. It is due to the limitation of our thought and capacity for linguistic expression that we use two concepts and two words for describing a self-identical real. Infinite consciousness and infinite existence are thus synonymous. And as regards ananda (bliss), it is the concomitant of infinitude. If consciousness be infinite existence, it must be infinite bliss, since want of bliss is only entailed by finitude.
The Vedāntist concludes that infinite consciousness, infinite existence and infinite bliss are the same identical fact and is the sole reality behind and in and through the plurality of appearances.
The Jaina philosopher is a realist to the core of his being and accepts the plurality as undeniable datum. He charges the Vedāntist