Gommatasara Jiva Kanda

SR No.: 001612
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Nemichandra Siddhant Chakravarti, J L Jaini
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1927
Total Pages: 438
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Principle, & Canon
File Size: 9 MB

Page 83

14
THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE JAINAS.
being. Then it would be conceded that it is the duty of every thinking spiritual being not to hurt anything that lives, and that it is the greatest sin to neglect this first precept of Life. How can then killing animals for sacrifice bring any good here or hereafter to the killer or the killed or indeed to any body else? No example could be a more patent illustration of perverse belief.
Much less justifiable and much more sinful and censurable, then, is the killing of animals for food or sport. Belief that such taking of life is right or excusable is certainly a perverse belief. The enormity and sinfulness of modern Wars is obvious.
True veneration is always the due of real and universal truth, and of those who have realised it themselves, and are willing and capable of helping others to realise it.
When this veneration is paid to a lesser doctrine or person, it is a sign that the belief which inspires it, is not right. When ignorant or superstitious people worship the goddess Mátá, Sítlá, to remove their small-pox or to give them children; or even educated or scientific people claim provisional or incomplete truth to be whole and eternal truth, and venerate it as such their veneration cannot be called right-belief, because it is directed towards a partially or wholly wrong matter.
When a man is not sure about the ultimate right or wrong of his belief, he is said to have wrong belief due to doubt. For example, like the saint Indra, who was in doubt whether a woman could or could not attain liberation.
People, who mortify the flesh to save the soul, venerate and follow the wrong. The flesh must be subordinated to the soul, but blind hurting of the flesh is not the true path to the liberation of the soul.
Right belief is belief in things as they really exist. It in volves a true knowledge of these things. Any indiscrimination or absence of knowledge, to whatever cause it may be due, prevents the belief from being complete and right. Then the Ajnána kind of wrong belief is said to arise.
मिच्छंतं वेदंतो जीवो विवरीयदंसणो होदि। ण य धम्मं रोचेदि हु महुरं खु रसं जहा जरिदो॥१७॥ मिथ्यात्वं विदन् जीवो विपरीतदर्शनो भवति । न च धम्मै रोचते हि मधुरं खलु रसं यथा ज्वरितः ॥१७॥