Gommatasara Karma Kanda

SR No.: 001611
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Nemichandra Siddhant Chakravarti, J L Jaini
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1927
Total Pages: 324
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Karma, & Canon
File Size: 20 MB

Page 65

THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE JAINAS.
alone, has consciousness. It alone is living, i. e., is Jiva. All else is non-soul, non-living, devoid of consciousness, which never had and never shall have consciousness, and is incapable of being conscious. Everything that is not Jiva is without consciousness. Pure soul is pure consciousness. Pure non-soul is without consciousness, or without any semblance of consciousness. This is not a merely logical division, convenient for analysis, arrangement or exposition. It is a basic fact. It must be thoroughly understood. Any error or doubt about this will certainly vitiate one's understanding of Truth. The duality of a human being is obvious. My nails are different from my idea of Shakespeare, or my ambition of being a worthy citizen of my country. The nail detached from me is dead matter. Not so the idea of Poetry or Patriotism. A still finer observation may be made. Life means a grouping together of so many vitalities, é. o. those faculties which enable me to apprehend objects by means of my senses, or to sense my own powers of body, speech and mind, or my respiration. These vitalities exist in me, but not in dead matter. Every fact in life, to the truly observant soul, cries out in a most unmistakeable tone the message of this inherent and inevitable mundane duality. There is Life. There is Lifelessness. We see it in every thing. We see it around us. We see it in us. It is only the man imbued with a philosophy, in the phrase of Hume, "subversive of all speculation”, who blinds himself to the obvious existence of these two facts, or who by looking too long and too intently and exclusively only upon one of these, thinks fit to apotheosize the one and to deny the other. Of this one-sided lattitude are born the pure materialists and the pure spiritualists, typified by the Chárvákas and the Vedantists of India respectively. For one, all is matter; for the other, all is soul. Thus at the very outset, Jainism sounds a clarion note of dissent from these one
ews of Truth. It takes its stand on the plurality of the aspects of Truth, and teaches us that both the materialists and the spiritualists are correct, but only partially. Certainly ; there is matter, there is Ajiva ; thus Chárváka is right and the Vedantist wrong. There is also Spirit, there is Jiva; thus Vedantism is true, and Chárváka wrong. We must see both, as both are obvious. Take only one broad common phenomenon of death. John dies. The whole of John does not disappear. His body is there. His vitality is not. He is not there; he has gone from the body. That he' who has gone from the body and who when he was with it and in it, made it alive', is the true John, the Jíva who was called John, according to Jainism. The body which he wore and which