Stress Academy Presents:
Web Series – The Story of Stress
Part 1 – Understanding Stress
Episode 3 – Does Stress Come From Within?
In the last video, we noted that scientists have a difficult time understanding psychological processes such as human awareness and emotions. It is not easy to attribute them conclusively to particular regions of the brain.
If not from the brain, where do human awareness and emotions come from? How do we as humans acquire free will in our decisions?
Now, let’s try to understand the make-up of the universe and ourselves from the Jain perspective.
According to Jain philosophy, the cosmos is defined as a conglomeration of six types of substances.(2) We’ll describe those six substances in the next video. However, the first question is “what is a substance?” The substance (or Dravya in Jain terms) is an entity that consists of many attributes (Guna).(1) For example, matter is one of the substance and matter particles consists of many attributes such as touch, taste, color, smell, mass, temperature.
Graphical Imagination of Substance
The second question is “what is an attribute?” The Attribute (Guna) is a permanent and inseparable property that pervades the entire region.(1) Each attribute represents a functionality of the Substance. For example, any mango possesses attributes such as touch, taste, color and smell in its entire region. It is never the case that touch exists in one area and smell exists in the other area of the particle. They all pervade to the entire region of the substance and exist simultaneously. All substances have infinite inseparable attributes and all attributes within the substance co-exist without interfering in each other’s functionality. In the example of mango, colors such as green and yellow manifest in the color attribute while flavors such as sour and sweet manifest in the attribute of taste. These attributes can be classified in two types: (1) common attributes – that are found in all six substances and (2) special attributes – that are specific to each individual substance. We shall study the details of those common and special attributes in future videos.
Each attribute within the substance has continuously changing modes or states called Paryay in Jain terminology.(1) For example, when a mango goes ripe, its color changes from green to yellow, its touch changes from hard to soft, its taste changes from sour to sweet and smell changes as well. States or modes within the attributes change every ‘Samay’, which is the smallest unit of time and one second consists of innumerable Samay. During every Samay, a new state emerges from the substance while the attributes remain unchanged. When a gold bangle is morphed into a chain, the state of shape changes but the attribute of shape remains.
The attributes of a substance can never be separated from the substance because they are the inherent properties of the substance. For example, a mango skin may change from green to yellow to black, but it will never not be a color. That means each substance is the sole owner of its attributes and changing states. Let’s take an example to understand this more clearly. In order to ripen the mango faster, the unripe mangoes are sometimes placed under wrapped dry grass. Here is the interesting question. When mango was unripe, it was sour and ripe mango has a sweet taste. So where did the sweet taste come from? Did it come from the dry grass or mango itself? Dry grass didn’t have sweetness in the first place so the sweetness must have manifested from within the mango particles. Essentially, it means that the change comes from within. If this concept makes sense to you, then here is something for you to think about? Where does the stress come from? From within us or outside? This concept has far reaching repercussions on the subject of stress and we will elaborate it in detail during upcoming videos. For now, if all changing states within substances are temporary, then there is good news for us. Stress must also be a temporary phenomenon and we don’t necessarily have to be worried all the time.
By the way, you may be wondering where are these concepts documented? These concepts of Substance-Attributes and Changing states were described in Jain cannons Panchastikay Sangrah and Pravachansar by the Jain monk Acharya Kundkund about 2000 years ago.
Before we conclude this video, I want to leave you with a question. We can easily notice that matter particles in nature possess attributes such as touch, taste, color, smell, mass and temperature etc. Those characteristics fundamentally exist in all particles all the time. So, which substance in nature has properties such as awareness, emotions, beliefs and happiness or unhappiness? Particles not belonging to the living body don’t seem to express those characteristics, so they cannot be the properties of those particles. After death, even the body doesn’t seem to hold or express awareness, emotions, beliefs and happiness. If those characteristics were truly attributes of the body particles, then the body would retain them after death, which we know is not true.
So which substance in nature do those characteristics belong to?
We’ll find out in the next video.
Until then. Don’t forget to like, subscribe and share the video.
References:
- Acharya Kundkund. Panchastikay Sangrah. India. ~100 C.E.
English translation and explanation by Vijay K. Jain, inspired by Acharya Vishuddha Sagar. 2020 C.E.
Available at: https://jainelibrary.org/book-detail/?srno=036508
- Acharya Kundkund. Pravachansar. India. ~100 C.E.
English translation and explanation by Vijay K. Jain, inspired by Acharya Vishuddha Sagar. 2018 C.E.
Available at: https://jainelibrary.org/book-detail/?srno=034445
