Charlotte Krause her Life and Literature

SR No.: 001785
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Shreeprakash Pandey
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith
Publication Year: 1999
Total Pages: 674
Language: English, Hindi, Gujarati
Classification: Book_English, Biography, & Articles
File Size: 11 MB

Page 73

28
Dr. Charlotte Krause: Her Life & Literature
worshipper expects from his 'God' neither help nor favour, but he plays the pious play merely in order to concentrate his mind and activity on his actual ideal and standard, and to find, as it were, some substantial support for his striving after the far-off aim of perfection.
Jaina monkhood is, of course, an ethical ideal high above the dispositions and faculties of body and mind of average man. Still, average man need not fear to be shut out from striving after the highest aim. Jainism welcomes every earnest longing for salvation, finds a place for it in its gradation of ethical attitudes, the Guṇasthānas, which range from a completely animal conception of life to the perfection of the Kevali, and allows it to find expression in the adoption of one or other of the ethical standards for laymen. Thus, e.g., for monks, the practising of Ahimsā, non-injury, is an absolute one, i.e., it refers to all living beings whatsoever, to non-doing, noncausing, and non-approving, and to thought, word and action. For the layman, however, it is only a partial one, by one or other of the just mentioned factors remaining excluded, and by being limited to the avoiding of intentional and purposeless injuring of harmless beings only.
This illustrates the discipline of Jaina laymen or Śrāvakas, who are supposed to keep 12 special commandments (Deśa-virati) in contradistinction to the strict rules for ascetics ( Sarva-virati), and whose whole life is influenced and regulated according to the chief ideas of non-injury and self-restraint within the limits of secular usage and propriety.
It is no wonder that Jainism, the commandments of which are so fit to guarantee the 'Greatest happiness of the greatest number' not only of men, but of all kinds of beings whatsoever, and to gratify the longing of the human mind for universal harmony ( maitri sarvabhuteṣu ), was at a time, wide-spread all over India, and has left traces everywhere, in the shape of beautiful temples of the Jainas, some of them being indeed marvels of combined architecture and sculpture.