Heart of Jainism

SR No.: 011099
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Mrs Sinclair Stevenson
Publisher: Mrs Sinclair Stevenson
Publication Year: 1915
Total Pages: 365
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 29 MB

Page 133

FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS
107 Adharmāstikāya the Jaina explain by an illustration Adhar. of a man walking along a road on a hot day; he sees the ma
kāya. shadow of a tree, and the shadow first attracts him to seek its shelter, and then keeps him quietly resting under it. So Adharmāstikāya without any movement on its part first attracts and then keeps motionless the one attracted. It has the same divisions of skandha, deśa, and pradeśa as Dharmāstikāya. The third subdivision of Arūpi Ajīva is Ākāśāstikāya, Ākāśāsti
kāya. or that which gives space and makes room. If, for example, a lamp is lighted, it is Ākāśāstikāya which gives space for its beams to shine in; if a nail be knocked into a wall, it is Ākāśāstikāya which gives it space to go into the wall. Again, if a lump of sugar is dropped into a cup of water and melts, the Jaina declare that the water remains water and the sugar sugar, but that a hidden power gives the sugar room to melt, and this power is Akāśāstikāya. As a house affords room for its residents, so Akāśāstikāya gives space for Ajiva to dwell in. Ākāśāstikāya is also divided into skandha, deśa, and pradeśa, but the skandha of Akāśāstikāya includes space in the heavens as well as on the earth.
The real nature of Kāla or time (the fourth division of Kāļa. Arūpi Ajiva) can only, according to the Jaina, be under. stood by the initiated. To the worldling Kāļa bears the connotation of time !,1 and he divides and subdivides it into seconds, minutes, hours, days, years, &c. But to the initiated Kāļa is indivisible, and is that which is continually making old things new and new things old.3 As an illustration, the Jaina quote the fate of a jīva or soul which may be forced by its karma to inhabit the body of a child. The child grows up into a young man, and finally dies in old age, and the jīva is forced to inhabit
Or Vyavahārika Kāļa.
* Addhāsamaya. . Dr. Griswold draws attention in this connexion to Bergson's doctrine of Time in his Creative Evolution.