Jainism And Naturalism

Great Essays
Devu Mahesan, 14510013
The Jain Darsana
Introduction
Spiritualism and naturalism are the two most important ancient streams of Indian thought. The naturalistic stream is systemized into two major systems, theVaisesika and Jaina. In these systems the naturalistic theory of the external world is combined with a non-naturalistic theory of the human soul, which is the “spiritualistic eschatology” and I feel that this combination of naturalism and nonnaturalism is a uniquely interesting trait and would make for a great study.The Jaina literature is assumed to have been based on the teachings of Mahavira. In this article I look at the philosophical outlook of Jainism, the way they conceptualize mind, soul and consciousness.
Jaina Metaphysics
Substance
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It can be seen that Jain philosophy is dualistic but is not a radical dualism with respect to Descartes dualism. Descartes has treated soul as an object of knowledge, however according to Jainism self is both the subject and the object of the knowledge. Also, Descartes had reduces self only to the ‘rational self’, which is confined to human beings as animals do not have a soul due to the lack of conscience. It can be seen that Jain philosophy answers the problem to the relation of abstract interacting with concrete elegantly, which Descartes was not able to do.
According to Jainism the soul possess suksmasarira while entering into a relationship and thus the relation is between two concrete entities. Dualism in western philosophy suffered many difficulties but as Jain dualism has abstained from becoming radical, it is logical and consistent to a very large extend. Karma
Karma provides a frame of reference with which the subject perceives the objects. Before getting into the philosophy of mind, one should know a little about the concept of karma as it plays a central role in the philosophy of mind. According to Jain philosophy, a living being commonly has
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Thus the new entity, the mind is manifested with consciousness of the soul and is highly influenced by the karma in the working.
Thus, the karma is interfaced between the soul and the mind and hence the state of the mind is a function of karma which changes with karma. Thinking, which is prominent to the vertebrates are done with the help of mind whereas the lower organisms with the help of adhyavasaya. Jains recognizes two typesof minds; one is the physical mind and the other is the psychical mind. The former is the physical counterpart of the mind and is primarily composed of manivargana. This is the part that interacts with the brain and the nervous system and stores memory. The latter, the psychical mind thinks, imagines plans, discriminates and takes decisions. And the mind derives these powers from the soul which can be thought of as the seat of the psychical mind.It is infact the impure mode of the soul. Hence a pure soul does not have a mind. The psychical mind in turn exists in two ways, one as a potential power and the other as a manifestation power. The ability of the psychical mind is the potential power and the manifestation power indicates the power of

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