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ANEKĀNTA AND MADHYAMA-PRATIPAD
NATHMAL TATIA
Vardhamana Mahāvīra started with implicit faith in ahimsa and austerities, while Gautama Buddha was impressed by the practice of meditation. The supreme problem of Mahāvīra was the conflict of ontological doctrines of his time, which led him and his followers to formulate the doctrine of anekanta. The Budddha was troubled about the psycho-ethical discipline, specially the final end of meditation and the rational adjustment of various codes of life, hedonistic and ascetic, which he characterized as madhyaina-Pratipad (middle course).
The ontological pursuits of Mahāvīra and his followers led to the discovery of the conflict in the nature of things, and the resolution of such conflict in their theory of anekanta. A real must change and this change is impossible without a mode that has originated, a mode that has passed, and also an aspect that continues to exist in order to make origination and passing possible. In other words, a real must have a persistent feature in order to appropriate change, that is, a real must be a substance capable of assuming modes. This is anekanta, that is the doctorine which accepts many-sidedness of a real which is necessarily continuity and change rolled into one.
The Buddha singled out the moral aspect of life and discovered the causal doctrine of pratityasamutpada (dependent origination) which traced the final source of life and death in avidyā (ignorance and false notions). This causal law determined the ontological speculation of the Buddha and his folowers. Substance, according to this law, was a myth raised up by imagination. The modes alone were real without any underiying unity. One mode replaces another in unbroken succession determined by causal nexus. The unity is replaced by an infinite chain of self-charged moments in this doctrine of pratityasamutpada which literally means (originatipn depending on relevant causes and conditions. Nothing is independent and self-sufficient in this view. The real is also sūnya, that is, devoid of a character which is self-exaplanatory without any reference beyond itself. The concept of unity is a composite act of imagination, called upadaya-prajñapti, that is, a concept (prajñapti) depending upon (upadaya) other constituent concepts. Nāgā. rjuna, a Madhyamika Buddhist, equates madhyama-pra tipad with these three aspects of the real when he says:
यः प्रतीत्यसमुत्पादः शून्यतां तां प्रचक्ष्महे । सा प्रज्ञप्तिरुपादाय प्रतिपत्सव मध्यमा ।।
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