POV

The other day I was scrolling LinkedIn and noticed something interesting. Even the C-suite senior leaders, the kind of people corporate expects to have the answers, were involved in debates where no single argument clearly stood out as the winner. The arguments were convincing, and they seemed valid from different points of view.

It made me wonder whether disagreements like these happen not because people are wrong, but because people are seeing the same thing from different angles.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, the ideas of Anekantavada and Syadvada resurfaced.

Anekantavada says that reality has many aspects and viewpoints. When we describe something, we usually describe only a few aspects of it. No single description can capture the whole truth.

Consider a glass of water.
We might describe it in terms of how much water it contains.
Or in terms of the temperature of the water.
Or in terms of how heavy or light the glass feels.
Or even on the material of the glass.

Each description may be correct, but each captures only one aspect of the same thing. This is what it means to say that truth is multifaceted.

Syadvada builds upon Anekantavada. Because reality is multifaceted, every statement is made from a particular point of view (apeksha).
Coming from the software world, I relate to this through a software analogy: every piece of data is always associated with some metadata (some context). No raw data exists. Only context-bound data exists.

No statement exists without context even when that context is not stated explicitly.

Note that Anekantavada does not mean that everyone is right in their own way or from their own perspective. A glass of water remains a glass of water, calling it milk does not make it milk. Instead, Anekantavada says that reality has many aspects, but those aspects belong to the same underlying entity (vastu) with its own nature and properties (gunas).

The point is that truth is rarely one-sided. Different viewpoints can contain partial truths.

Perhaps peace begins with accepting that our viewpoint is only one among many.