Introduction to Jainism and its Culture

SR No.: 001605
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Balbhadra Jain
Publisher: Kundkund Gyanpith Indore
Publication Year: 2002
Total Pages: 334
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Religion, & Culture
File Size: 21 MB

Page 104

When the installation of a temple and an image is done in such pure and pious atmosphere and with pious and pure feelings, the temple acquires the ambience of a Samavasaraņa (the divine assembly of a Tirthankara) and the image is invested with the detached Arahanta and his virtues. The devotee recognizes only these attributes in the temple and the image. The difference between an ordinary house and a temple or an image sold in market place and the one installed in a temple is ihat the later invokes feelings of devotion and veneration in the beholder. This is precisely the purpose of installation ceremony.
THE SECRET OF SALUTATION AND WORSHIP
Is there a religious person in this world who, going in a temple, eulogizes, sings hymns of praise for, and worships the stone from which the image is made, its type, its colour, its origin, or the sculptor wiio made it. Certainly not, no religion or sect supports or allows this. All the worship or singing of hymns by a devotee before an image is for the deity he venerates. That is why those who call idol worship as worship of an inert object do so out of ignorance or delusion. An image is the indicator of the spiritual direction of the deity or the object of worship. It is the yardstick of the leanings of a religion or a person. As is the leaning so is the image. An individual goes to a temple to worship an idol according to his personal leanings, attitude and goal. There, he invokes the deity and worships it. Those who are cruel, nonvegetarian, and love violence imagine only about such deities that are cruel, violent, bloodthirsty, and non-vegetarian, and worship their images. Those who are salacious, short tempered, and consume intoxicants conceive of deities favouring their attitudes and go before their images to worship. Venerating and worshiping bolsters their attitudes. For example, when a salacious person gets excited on seeing a beautiful woman, it is not the woman who instigates the feeling of lust. He, in fact, already had that feeling. It only awoke and got invigorated by looking at the woman. In the same way the veneration and worship of the image of a deity in a temple of one's choice the already existing attitudes blossom and develop further.
One who wishes beatitude of the self, whose attitudes have turned from attachment to detachment, and whose goal is to rid his soul of karmas, worships a god who is detached and liberated from the world. He sings hymns before, worships virtues of, and expresses his devotion