Structure and Functions of Soul in Jainism

SR No.: 001617
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: S C Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith
Publication Year: 1978
Total Pages: 272
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Epistemology, Nyay, & Spiritual
File Size: 16 MB

Page 170

166 :: Structure and Functions of Soul in Jainism
karma are responsible for the generation of pleasure and
pain.
Bliss as an Unobstructed Manifestation of the Faculty of Feeling
In the perfect stage where obstructions due to karmas are totally eliminated, the soul does not accept the instrumentality of the senses. So the faculty of feeling also becomes free from sensuous dependence and associations. Feeling then advances by itself and is the maximum enjoyment of the unobstructed manifestations of the soul's faculties. It is the realization of the soul by itself in respect of ānanda or the bliss attribute. Bliss must be different from the feelings of mundane souls, and in this sense we can say that the emancipated souls neither enjoy pleasure nor suffer pain. If a faculty of feeling were absent in the soul, the states of pleasure and pain would also have been impossible. Pure bliss, pleasure and pain all agree in being states of feeling. The presence of pleasure and pain in the lower stages presupposes some alien disturbances in the soul. Pleasure and pain are said to be posivive states only because they are based on a positive faculty of the soul. This is why the Jaina does not agree with the Naiyāyika and the Sāmkhya who hold a total cessation of feeling in the stage of liberation. He agrees with Advaita Vedānta in this respect, because it holds the supreme soul to be existent, conscious and blissful. While dealing with Advaita Vedānta it is said, “The fleeting pleasures which we have in wakeful and in dream can be understood as the fragmentary manifestation of the joy or bliss which forms the esssence of the selfıl We also see in the philosophy of Ranade that bliss does not take only a dominant position in the absolute but existence and consciousness are reduced to the status of mere means for the attainment of bliss. Existence and consciousness are not found idependently of bliss. In Ranade's philosophy
1. Chatterjee and Datta: An Introduction to Indian Philosophy, p. 459