Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 1

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

Page 136

NAYAS
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too imperious to have an occasion for the pursuit of these values. But
ermined hostility to a man of culture on the score of his pursuit
aterial ends is dangerous and if it seizes hold of the general mass of people, the consequences will be disastrous. A man of serious disposition and rational frame of mind is not content with the satisfaction of the animal needs. With acquisition of abundant physical resources, he will seek for higher happiness. The statisfaction of the demands of the senses creates other cravings. Temporal prosperity is a good thing, if it prepares the way for the pursuit of higher culture, but cannot be an end by itself. So the practical attitude is only an extremistic reaction against idealism in its extremest form. But, like all extremism, it must be a lop-sided way of ļife. The aberrations of philosophy cannot be answered by total repudiation of philosophy. It only encourages obscurantism which will shut the door to inquiry and progress.
Extremism tends to give a distorted view of life. The parti. cularistic bias which finds favour with submerged sections of mankind does not stop with the repudiation of universals. The concept of universal emerges after the comparison of the past with the present and anticipation of the future. The common features of these data call for a synthesis which ends in positing universals. The positivistic attitude is impatient with these speculations and in the course of its growth concentrates on the living present. It refuses to take note of the past which it regards as dead and defunct and the future as unrealized and unborn uncertainty. The truth must be found in the immediate present moment. The test of practical utility is capable of being satisfied by the immediate present moment and not by the defunct past or by the hypothetical future.
This approach has given rise to the Buddhist philosophy of flux. The real must be momentary. A thing comes to exist only for a moment and has no link with the past and no truck with the future. The belief in the permanent is only a superstition. The permanent is supposed to have a number of moments as its units. But we do not get permanent satisfaction of our needs from anything. It only gives one result and one advantage or disadvantage. We must avoid the unpleasant and catch hold of the pleasant and not delude ourselves with hopes of future happiness by neglecting the present. This line of approach is dubbed as the straightline approach (rjusūtra) as performed by the rhinoceros. One must not look behind and sigh for the past joy and not sit idle with crossed fingers for the future millennium.
The Buddhist fluxist has created a wonderful philosophy with its insistence on the momentariness of existents. A thing has neither