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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
Vedānta (S'ankara )
4722
means nescience. It consists in confusing the subject with the object and in supposing that the objects are the subject. Thus, avidyā or nescience is that which creates the sense of distinctions which actually do not exist. The sense of seeing plurality of things is perhaps inherent in all persons; it is the inherent tendency of the human mind to see things as many when in actuality, there is only one Reality. Avidyā cannot be caused by Brahman for it is immutable. To the Brahman avidyā is non-existent. It is a peculiar principle which is indefinable or indescribable; it is not real, because it can be brought to termination by right knowledge; it is not uncontradicted. It is not also unreal like the sky. lotus since we experience its actual operations when we see snake in a rope, silver instead of a shell and water-waves in desert. It has the double power of concealing ( 317 ) the real nature of the thing and (fateta) of distorting or perverting its vision. It is not both real and unreal and therefore, indescribable in either of the categories (afaaaaa). Avidya is beginningless, since all persons experience it since birth and without being taught. It is perhaps inlaid in our nature of finitude to see things in certain forms and to understand them in certain limited categories. It consists in our subjective modes of understanding the world in relative forms. It is perhaps the very mode of our understanding the world in its manifoldness and with distinctions and relations. It is natural in our intellect to see things separately from one another. To one who has the
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