Concept of Divinity in Jainism

SR No.: 001637
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: P Ajay Kothari
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy
Publication Year: 2000
Total Pages: 248
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Religion, & Devotion
File Size: 15 MB

Page 148

lenged. Not only that the conception of God as a perfect being is questioned -- it was often asked if God were perfect, then why his creations were imperfect? If the world is the creation of a perfect being, how is it that there are sorrows and sufferings, miseries and want, and iniquities in his created beings? Whatever may be the position of God as a perfect being, it is an undeniable fact that there are miseries in the world. The Jains and the Buddhists went on further to emphasise that if the woes and troubles of the creatures are to be accounted for by the act of the creatures themselves, and if the creator-God could not be held responsible for them, then what is the point of accepting the outside creator-God? So they eliminated the outside creator-God from their process of thinking. They accepted this world as it is and tried to account for the miseries. Buddhism says that the miseries of the creatures are due to tanha (unquenchable thirst or craving) for existence on the part of the creatures themselves. Jainismi asserts that miseries and imperfections are due to karma (a series of actions) on the part of the unemancipated soul for which he comes to live in this world again. Hence if any Godhood (Divinity) is attached, it is to be attached to a person who is a perfectly emancipated soul being absolutely free from all taints of selfishness. He is a person who saw the eternal varieties as they were and realised the truth as they came to him”. 19
Jainism rejects the existence of a first cause or the creator of universe. Still it is very far from being purely atheistic, for it posits definitely the divinity of the soul and the possibility of our realising its destiny. Thus, though the doctrine of creator-god is denied, Jainism believes in mighty truth of the human becoming the Divinity, the perfect God. Prof. T.G. Kalghatgi observes, "We have not to seek God there in the world outside, nor is God to be found in the dark, lonely corner of a temple with doors all shut, He is there within us. He is there with the tiller tilling the ground and the path-maker breaking stones in the sense that each individual soul is to be considered as God, as he is essentially Divine
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THE CONCEPT OF DIVINITY IN JAINISM
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