World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 812

plurality and practical life, cannot be said to be indescribable. It is self-contradictory to hold that Māyā or Avidyā is both existent and non existent. If it is mere negation, it cannot cause bondage. It must he positive entity, since it causes bondage. So, it must exist along with Brahman. This is dualism. If it is beginningless, it must be endless. Then, there can be no liberation, because Advaitins claim that without destruction of Avidyā no liberation is possible. If the knowledge of duality or difference is false, the knowledge of unity or identity, also must be false, because it is knowledge, knowledge of the world cannot be false, like the knowledge of dreams, since dreams are not absolutely false like hare's horns. So, doctrine of Māyā is irrational concept.69
Vidyānandi, a first rank thinker of Jainism who flourished in 9th Century A. D., argues, that, if Brahman is the only Reality and on acconut of Māyā or Avidyā, this apparent world exist, then it is impossible to prove, either existence of Māyā or Mithyātva (illusory nature) of the world by any means of valid knowledge.70 The fundamental objection raised by Jain thinkers against Advaitins, whether the doctrine of Māyā (Cosmic illusion) adopted to explain this multiplicity of the phenomenal world is real or unreal. If it is real, then it destroys the non-dual nature of Brahman and leads to an inevitable duslism. If it is unreal, then this world which is caused by Māyā will not be possible. To say that Māyā is unreal and still it creates this world is as absurd as to say that a woman is barren and that she is mother.71 And the advaitins themselves accept the theory that the real thing cannot be produced from unreal thing. Again, the very statement that Māyā is indescribable, i.e. neither existent nor non-existent on account of being existent in the state of mundane life and no more at the state of realization, indicates, that it is describable in terms of either existent on the phenomenal level or non-existent in the state of liberation. To say that Māyā is indescribable is self-contradictory like saying that I am silent throughout the life and my father is bachelor.72 Vidyānandi further, argues that, if we grant that Māyā exists, then where does it exist. Neither Brahman nor Jīva can be locus of Māyā. It cannot exist in supreme Brahman which is pure consciousness by nature. If it exists in Brahman, then cannot be called pure consciousness on account of being associated with Māyā. Even individual self is pure consciousness by nature and in essence, it is not different from Brahman and this free from all taint of Māyā. If Māyā is an independent reality like Brahman and co-eval with it from the beginningless time, then it will be an
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