things from their most general and fundamental aspect as "being."
This according to the Jains is the Vedanta way of looking at things.

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[Footnote 1: _Syadvadama@njari_, pp. 171-173.]

178

The vyavahara-naya standpoint holds that the real essence
of things is to be regarded from the point of view of actual practical
experience of the thing, which unifies within it some general
as well as some special traits, which has been existing from past
times and remain in the future, but yet suffer trifling changes
all the while, changes which are serviceable to us in a thousand
ways. Thus a "book" has no doubt some general traits, shared
by all books, but it has some special traits as well. Its atoms are
continually suffering some displacement and rearrangement, but
yet it has been existing as a book for some time past and will
exist for some time in the future as well. All these characteristics,
go to make up the essence of the "book" of our everyday experience,
and none of these can be separated and held up as being
the concept of a "book." This according to the Jains is the
Sa@mkhya way of looking at things.

The first view of paryaya-naya called _@rjusutra_ is the Buddhist
view which does not believe in the existence of the thing in the
past or in the future, but holds that a thing is a mere conglomeration
of characteristics which may be said to produce effects at
any given moment. At each new moment there are new collocations
of new qualities and it is these which may be regarded as
the true essence of our notion of things [Footnote ref 1].

The nayas as we have already said are but points of view, or
aspects of looking at things, and as such are infinite in number.
The above four represent only a broad classification of these. The
Jains hold that the Nyaya-Vais'e@sika, the Vedanta, the Sa@mkhya,
and the Buddhist, have each tried to interpret and systematize
experience from one of the above four points of view, and each regards
the interpretation from his point of view as being absolutely
true to the exclusion of all other points of view. This is their error
(_nayabhasa_), for each standpoint represents only one of the many
points of view from which a thing can be looked at. The affirmations
from any point of view are thus true in a limited sense and
under limited conditions. Infinite numbers of affirmations may
be made of things from infinite po