Paper Presented on the topic International Conference on “Positivism”,
Lord Mahavir was born in 599 B.C. Lord Mahavir was born in 599 B.C. at Vaisali Bihar and died at Pawapuri in 527 B.C. at Pawapuri Bihar. Sacred language of Jains was ardhmagadhi which is a Prakrit dialect. According to Jaina philosophy five kinds of knowledge: mati, sruti, avadhi, manah paryaya and Kevala exists. Mati is ordinary cognition obtained by normal means of sense perception. Matijnana is distinguished into three kinds viz. upalabodhi or perception, bhavna or memory, upayoga or understanding. Matijnana is knowledge by means of Indriya’s or senses and mind which is called anindriya to distinguish it from senses. We always have sense presentation or darsana prior to the rise of Mahjana. Sruti or testimony is knowledge derived through signs symbols or words. Srutanjana is of four kinds namely labdhi or association bhavna or attention, upayoga or understanding and naya or aspects of the meaning of things.
Avadhi is direct knowledge of things even at a distance of time and space. It is knowledge by Clairvoyance.
Manahparyaya is direct knowledge of thoughts of others as in telepathic knowledge of other’s minds.
Kevala or perfect knowledge comprehends all substances and their modifications.
Caitanya or consciousness is the essence of jiva, and the two manifestations of Caitanya are perception (darsana) and intelligence (jnana). The existence of an objective reality beyond and beside consciousness, apprehended by perception and understood by intelligence, is asserted by the Jainas. The attributes and relations of things are directly given in experience and are not products of thought or imagination. The process of knowing does not modify the object of knowledge. The consciousness of Jiva is ever active, and this activity reveals its own nature as well as that of the object. In case of self-consciousness the relation between knowledge (Jnana) and the object of knowledge (Jneya) is very intimate. Jnanin and Jnana the subject of knowledge and knowledge are inseparable, though indistinguishable. In self-consciousness, the subject of knowledge, the object of knowledge and knowledge itself are different aspects of a single concrete unity. There are no jivas without jnana, since that would take away the Cetana or conscious character of the Jivas and reduce them to the level of ajiva dravyas and there could be no jnana without selves, for that would make jnana foundationless. All knowledge is in the soul, though it manifests itself when disturbing factors of emotions and passions are removed.
Knowledge is of two forms, pramana or knowledge of a thing it is in itself, and naya or knowledge of a thing in its relation. The doctrine of standpoints is a peculiar feature of the Jaina logic. A naya is a standpoint from which we make a statement about a thing. We define and separate our standpoints by abstraction. The result of abstraction and concentration on particular ends is the relativity of knowledge. Jainism makes basic and fundamental the principle that truth is relative to our standpoints. The artha (object or meaning) nayas are the following:
Naigamanaya: It tells us of the general purpose which controls the series of acts and emphasises the teleological character of life.
Sangrahanya: emphasise the common features. Vyavharanya is the popular conventional point of view based on empirical knowledge.
Rjusutranya: It takes into account the state of thing at a particular point of time. It does not regard all continuity and identity.
Sabdanaya: Back name has its own meaning and relationship between terms and their meanings is a relative one, if we forget this fallacies arise.
Samabhirudhanaya: distinguishes terms according to their roots. Evambhutanaya is a specialized form of the sixth kind.
The nayas are also distinguished into dravyarthika from the point of view of substance and paryayarthika, from the point of view of modification or condition. This doctrine of standpoints is described with help of a story six behind men, who each laid hands on a different part of the elephant and tried to describe the whole animal. The man who caught the ear thought that the creature resembled a winnowing fan, the holder of the leg imagined that he was clinging to a big round pillar etc. It was he who saw the whole that perceived that each had only a portion of the truth. The most important use of standpoints is Syadvada, which holds all knowledge to be only probable. Every proposition gives us only a perhaps, or may be or Syad. There can be seven different points of view of speaking a thing:
(i) Is
(ii) Is not
(iii) Is and Is not
(iv) Is unpredictable
(v) Is and Is unpredictable
(vi) Is not and is unpredictable
(vii) Is, Is not and Is unpredictable.
The different types of consciousness depend on the operation of the opposing forces of matter ranging from that in which these forces are actually in full play, in which case the knowing power of the soul can manifest itself only through the one sense of touch as in metals and the like, to that in which all of them are removed, when the bull-blaze of omniscience is reached. Jainism admits a dualism between mind and body. Three forms of consciousness are recognized knowing, feeling or the experiencing of the fruits of karma and willing. As a rule we have first feeling, then conation and lastly knowledge. The omniscience of the Sidhatman involves the reflection of the universe in consciousness, though the soul is not necessarily in bondage. The subjection of desire and consequently to bondage is not essential for jiva, since it is possible to be saved from desire. That which has consciousness is jiva that which has not consciousness but can be tasted, touched and seen and smelt is a jiva.
Time or Kala is sometimes recognized as a quasi-substance. It is an all pervading forms of the universe on which are strings the successive movements of the world. It is not a summation of a series of discontinuous changes, but a process of persistence, an enduring from the past into the present. Time has existence but no Kayatva or magnitude. It has no extension being unilateral. A distinction is made between eternal time, without form, beginning or end, and relative time with beginning and end and variations of hour, minute etc. The former is called Kala and the latter Samaya. Kala is the substantial cause of Samaya, Vartana or continuity of changes is inferred from parinama or modification. Relative time is determined by changes or motion in things. These changes themselves are effects of absolute time. Time is called a cakdra, a wheel. Whatever is perceived by the senses organs, the various kinds of sariras (or bodies of Jiva’s) the physical mind the karma’s etc. are murta or figured objects. Sound, grossness, shape, darkness, brightness, heat and cold are modifications of the substance known as pudgala. Jaina physics also talks of the atomic structure of the universe. The objects of the physical world are comprehended by atoms or parmanus which has no beginning, middle or end. It is neither created nor destroyed and it is amurta (formless) but the basis of all murta (form). According to Jainism karma is of material nature (paudgalika). Karma has the peculiar property of developing effects of merit and demerit. When the soul enters into commerce with the outer world retards the radiance of the soul. In usual state of things Karma has cause and effect relationship. But when Karma is prevented from warming and annihilated altogether the soul reaches Ksayika state which leads to Moksa. The ajiva consists of five entities of which four are immaterial or amurta – space, time, dharma, adharma and fifth one is murta which is material or figured or pudgala. These five categories constitute the loka and beyond it is imme asuralite infinite called aloka. There are various types of jiva’s and some of them are a prey to illusion and are condemned to submit to the yoke of matter through an infinite succession of lives. But mukta or liberated jiva dwells in a state of supermundane perfection unconcerned with worldly affairs. The essential characteristic of all the jiva’s is consciousness or cetana, which is never destroyed by whatever obscurity from external causes. A peculiar feature of the jaina theory is its doctrine that there are souls even in inorganic objects like metals and stones. The potter has the idea (bhava) and the pot exists in his consciousness, and there arises the actual pot with material clay. Soul can maintain its existence independent of the body consciousness is a reality independent of matter and in no sense its product. The cause of the soul’s embodiment is the presence in it of Karmic matter. At death the soul, with its Karmna-Sarira goes in a few moments to the place of its new birth, and there assumes a fresh body, expanding or contracting according to the dimensions of the latter. The mundane souls are divided into four classes according to the place of their birth: (i) those born in hell (ii) those in the animal world (iii) those in human society and (iv) these in the divine kingdom. It deliverance is to be achieved; the lower matter is to be subdued by the higher spirit. When soul is free from the weight which keeps it down, it rises up to the top of the universe where the liberated dwell. Morality is necessary to bring about the reformation of man’s nature and prevent the formation of new Karma. The way to nirvana lies through the three jewels (triratna) of faith on Jina, knowledge of his doctrine and perfect conduct. Belief in real existence or tattvas is right faith, knowledge of real nature without doubt or error is right knowledge. An attitude of neutrality without desire or aversion towards the objects of the external world is right conduct. The three should be pursued together as they form one path.
Jaina’s refute the theory of the creation of the world out of nothing or series of accidents. The systematic working of the laws of nature can’t be a product of luck or accidents. If it is argued that everything that exists must have a maker, then that maker himself would stand in need of another maker, and we should landed in an infinite regress. The whole universe of being consisting of mental and material factors has existed from all eternity, undergoing an infinite number of revolutions produced by the power of nature without the intervention of any eternal deity. The diversities of the world are traced to the five cooperating conditions of time (Kala) nature (Svabhava), necessity (Niyati), activity (Karma) and desire to be and act (Udyama). Nirvana or deliverance is not annihilation of the soul, but its entry into a blessedness that has no end. It is an escape from the body not from existence. Liberated being is neither long nor small, nor black, nor blue, nor bitter, nor pungent, neither cold nor hot, without body, without rebirth... he perceives he knows, but there is no analogy, its essence is without form, there is no condition of the unconditioned. The Sidha state is not the cause or effect of the Samsara series. It is absolutely unconditioned. Causality has no hold on the redeemed soul.
In my opinion for a better understanding of consciousness religious thought of Buddhism are noteworthy to mention. According to Buddhism mind is a way in which the man valued things. They looked on mind as a more (bhuya, bhiyyo) than the body but as a somewhat working the body. The ways in which man valued things were either two fold: ways of body and mind or threefold: thought, word and deed or action of body, of speech, of mind; kaya karma-vali-karma, mano-karma. In an Abhidhamma commentary which took its form in 5th century A.D. language too if it points to one thing more emphatically than to others shows the man trying to reveal himself in relation to this and that, trying to get from the self-‘within’ to the other listening self not ‘within’. Always it is the ‘agent acting’ that language ultimately means. Even when man has wrong heartedly substituted mind or other abstraction: consciousness, desire, will and what not for the self or man, language invests the dummy with the functions of an agent, when the dummy is put a collective name for the ways, the modes in which the agent acts. In the five-fold list of senses, a sixth sense and its object are often appended mano and dhamma’s a crude effort of analysis inferior to that Sankya in which Mano Mana’s are not ranked in the same category as bare sense, but is with two other faculties that which handles conveys, interprets sense. For our word mind, thought and consciousness equivalent in Pali terms are mano (variant of manasa), litta and vinnana.
In mano we have the man valuing, measuring, appraising and also purposing, intending. In citta we more usually have the man as affecting and affected, as experiencing. In Vinnana we have the man as not of this world only, as soul. Mano was somehow informed with tendency to act, and if we see in our own world, the will as not the servant of mind, dictated to by it, but the one active principle, engaged, when called mind, on a certain intensive form of activity. Citta is also found in a wide range: variety, inquisitiveness, instability, impulsiveness as well as contrast with body and as both thinking and thought.
The terms reflection, inference and scrutiny have the prefix of repetition and collection pati-pacchave-kkhati, patisancikkhati. Both words belong to the vocabulary of vision. The term reflection had the double usage the founder is recorded as administering his son Rahula: What is the use of mirror (adasa)? ‘To reflect Sir’. Even so must we reflect and reflect in all our work of body, speech or thought namely, this that I want to do would be harmful to myself and others.’
Nana meant just knowledge in either a next to hand or a lofty sense. Thus the thirsty man comes to a well and sees water. He knows, he sees, as the old religious refrain for he had nana. But he can’t get at the water. Thus refrain in one version of the men message inspiring the founder is described as coming to be! Coming to be! at that thought there arose in him a vision into things not called before to mind and knowledge (Nana) arose wisdom (panna), lore (vijja), light (aloko) arose. In Adhidhamma no term has attracted so many accessory terms or quasi equivalents as has panna. The eye of panna or panna vision is thus described:
The eyes of flesh,
the deva eye
And eye of wisdom
best of all (anuttaram).
He who has panna is said ‘to know’ (pajanati): what does he know? Buddhism speaks of Vinnana – in how many ways is there vinnana? One is aware of what? Panna is to be made to become; Vinnana is to be understood. Vedana (expeiencing) and Sanna (perceiving) are also stated to be bound up with and not different from Vinnana. By what does one know (Pajanati) the knowledge? One knows by the eye of Panna? What is the aim of panna? Panna has the aim of higher knowledge (abhinna), thorough knowledge (parinna) and of eliminating (pahana).
“All comments Budhaghosa, are modes of knowing: only prefix is different.” He then by a similie which whether original or not, he uses in at least three of this works. Compares Sanna, Vinnana, Panna to the different reaction provoked, at right of the precious metals, in a child, a citizen and a metallurgical expert. The first sees in them coloured objects, the second seeds also in then tokens representing utilities to be got, the third is also able to judge as to their origin and their origin and their fashioner. Thus Vinnana includes the work of perception and also general notions. But Panna includes both these and also “by an uplift of energy attains to a revelation of the way.” The verb-bhevetabba is literally “must be made to become.” Panna was not simply exercise of thought on matters of general knowledge and practice, nor was it dialectic, nor desultory reverie. It was intelligence diverted by or rather as concentrated volition, from lower practical issues till, as a fusion of sympathy, synthesis, synergy, it made to become that spiritual vision which had not been before. Panna is no mere intellectual convolution of thought for the very man as growing: not only as coming to know but also as coming to be. In Buddhism preoccupation with analysis of mind, resulted in an interesting, unmistakable increment in terms for “mind-ways” or “mindings”. These two terms are fitter than ‘mind’ – a dangerous ward as tending to be conceived as substance more than as process: as an ‘is’ rather than a ‘becoming’ and to be used as a dummy-man. Everyone of the mind-terms cited is process or way rather than state.
In Pali and Jain scriptures we find the triplet action of body: action of speech, action of mind (Kaya Kamma, Vaci Kamma, mano kamma) as we roughly say word, thought and deed. We know that the triplet is a feature in the early Persian thought which we associate with the work of Zarathustra, but it is not found in early upanishads nor in the Bible which does not get beyond linking of work and deed, nor in the plays called of Shakespeare, albeit it emerges in the book of common prayer. Self is a vantage point and a dear friend for those whose conduct in deed and thought and word is virtuous. Because man associated himself in plain terms with his deeds without surveying him as a static beholder nor a passive creature of destiny but as actor, as doer and as such willer – as a chooser, that is and as a becomes.
Any sense-feeling or emotion may, as determining action, where uneasiness is persistent, be called desire. Desire is wishing as opposed to willing. Chanda is the word for wish or want. Chanda is also synonym to Kattu-Kamayta ‘state of desire to act’. Viriya is mental inception of energy striving, onward effort, exertion, endeavour, zeal, ardour, vigour fortitude, unfaltering verve, sustained desire, unflinching endurance and firm grasp of the burden, right padhana. It is impossible to describe Buddhism without a sense of injustice done because of the widening gap between teachings of Buddha and the aftermen, the overshadowing interest in mind, the role that language plays in interpretation or the agent acting and language invests the dummy with the function of an agent points to one thing more emphatically them to others.
Becoming which the man is shown as experiencing in himself, in psychic generosity, (b) willing to bring about in other man. He is said to act with a mind (citta) accompanied by amity, or the rest.
An outstanding term ‘suffuse’ (pharati) described by Sakyan poets thus: Passion for him gone by, hatred he should repress, He should make became mind that is friendly the boundless, Ever with zest by night and by day let him spread (pharate), Overall quarters the thing that is infinite (Sutta-Nipata 507).
Buddhism has even been rapped over the knuckles for a benevolence limited to sentiment in meditation. But originally the act described as “amity accompanied thought” was an effort to transmit love or pity or comfort by will. A psychic phenomenon of becoming different from that of ‘average’ man through procedure of mental analysis is mentioned in the steps at (or to) idhi (idhipada).
These four steps to idhi made to become, practised, advance the going further and further: what four? (i) Here a monk brings about a step-to-idhi accompanied by combining concentrated effort with a mantra (Chanda) (ii) by combining concentrated effort with energy (iii) by combining concentrated effort with thought (iv) by combining concentrated effort with examination (Vimamsa).
According to a Buddhist monk “A man is only the coordinate combination of human activities and matter. We can’t get very distant in an adequate notion of will without a willer. We may cheat ourselves with thought by figuring this as an objective inner world of impressions and ideas. We may cheat ourselves with “feelings” by figuring this as waves of somatic resonance and what not. But we can’t get on thus with “will” because will is self-directing. According to one sutta will, expressed as ‘element of initiative’ of necessity implied the agent. Will without willer is meaningless. But the Buddhists, in diverging from Brahmanism, on the grand (judging by the suttas) of protest against ritual and birth monpolies, first stripped the man of the brahmanic divine immanence, then finally stripped the “activities and matter” of the man i.e. self.
It was mentioned in the Buddhist compendium that however swiftly an act of sense-perception may be performed, it was held that in every such act, seventeen moments or flashes (the metaphor is mine) of consciousness took place, each moment being considered to involve three time-phases of all becoming, namely a nascent, static and dissolving phase. Thus the process of sense-cognition is like: when say, a visible-object after one citta moment (1) has passed enters the avenue or focus of sight, the life-continuum (bhavanga) vibrating twice (2) (3) its stream is interrupted then the adverting moment rises and ceases (4). Immediately after, there arise and cease in order, the visual impression (vinnana) aware of just that visible object(s) recipient consciousness (6) investigating consciousness (7) determining or assigning consciousness (8) then seven flashes of full perception’s or apperception (javana) (9-15), finally if the percept is sufficiently vivid, two moments of retention or registering consciousness (16, 17). This phase etymologically is very differently named: taddarammana or that object that and not another = identifying. “After that comes subsidence into life-continuum.”
There commentaries illustrate the above mentioned multiple a state of momentary psychosis in the following similie: A man lies asleep with covered beneath a mango tree (stream of unconscious life or bhavanga). A mind stirs the branches (preceding citta I and vibrating bhavanga 2, 3). This causes a mango to fall by him (arrest or disruption of unconscious life. The man is waked by the falling fruit (adverting 4). He uncovers his head (sense-impression of fruit 5) picks up the fruit (receiving 6), inspects it (investigating 7) determines what it is (determining 8) eats it (full perception 9-15) swallows the last morsels (registering 16, 17), recovers his head and steeps agains (subsidence into bhavanga). (After-taste had perhaps been more about for 16, 17).
Citta (consciousness), mano 9mind), manasa (intelligence), vinnana (awareness) are really one in meaning they are various modes of coming to know (Ledi Sayadaw).
Dr. Ledi Sayadow in commenting has illustrated by a new and ingenious parable, the functions of five Khandha’s in vindication of the adequacy of this ancient category to take into account all human activities in such spheres are governed by natural desire.
Why did the exalted Buddha when classifying conditioned experience under the concepts of aggregates (Khandha) make the number five? According to Ledi Sayadaw these five groups of phenomena our acts regarded as felicific, on occasions where natural desires have play find accomplishment. The following parable may illustrate. A wealthy man, seeking wealth builds a ship and equips it with a crew of fifty-two sailors. By transport of passengers he amasses money, of the crew one is expert in all works relating to the ship, and has these carried out, and one is acquainted with the parts to be visited and the routes thither and he from a commanding position directs the steering. The answer, maintaining boat and crew receives and enjoys the ensuring wealth.
“Now by the sea we may understand the way of life ever renewed (Samsara), by the ship owner, a person pursuing natural and worldly desires. By the ship we may understand the material aggregate (rupakhanda) by the wealth it brings in, the aggregate of feeling, by the former officer, the aggregate of perception, by the crew carrying out his orders the mental properties labelled as Sankgara aggregate, and by the latter officer, who directs the ship’s course, the Vinnana aggregate.
Feeling covers all our enjoying, partaking of perception, include our conversation with our intelligence of our competence respecting all experience in the range of things human, divine or intra-human. That which we call Sankhara’s covers all that we do by thought, word or deed according to what we have perceived. And Vinnana, or the aggregate of consciousness or cognitions is all those sense-impressions sense-cognitions, which act as heralds and guides wherever we happen to be, pointing out, as it were, in our daily activities and saying “this here that is there.” Thus it is that the five aggregates cover all that is wrought within the range of natural and worldly desires.
Buddha’s teachings can help the thoughtful of the next generation to look on the things in truer and more historical perspective. Buddha’s teachings should not be merely perceived as a sort of great doctor, seeking to save the body (and with it the weilding instrument, the mind) from disease, old age and death, as summed up in the word dukkha, but also as a gardener of the growing plant that the man or soul really is. He is the one to have taught us. Becoming as, not this, but growth – growth not of the impermanent body and mind but of the very man, of whom we have no scientific right to say, he must after growing decay: this is passed over. It is for us of today and tomorrow to be inspired by Buddha not as telling men to seek the God-in-self of his day and His monitions as a lamp, a refuge and nothing else, but as telling man in modern parlance to walk by his own little imperfect light and save himself unaided by that.
