Religion and Culture of the Jains

SR No.: 002009
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jyoti Prasad Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith
Publication Year: 1999
Total Pages: 258
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Religion, & Culture
File Size: 16 MB

Page 79

THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
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in the forin of sleep may be necessary for an ordinary, average human or subhuman being, in order to keep himself healthy and happy, but it is not absolutely so. At least, in the stage of spiritual evolution when a person has attained kevala-jñāna and become an Arhat, he needs absolutely no sleep in order to be healthy and happy. In fact, an omniscient being never sleeps; if he were to, the permanence of omniscience would not be possible. Feelings, Emotions and Passions It is human nature, and a well-admitted psychological fact, that one does not stop at congnition, but in the wake of sensuous comprehension the mind at once becomes active and begins to agitate, producting in the first instance a consciousness of pleasure or pain, as the case may be. This feeling gives rise to further emotions and passions, ultimately ending in conation which takes the forms of desire and volition and acts as the spring of further action. Thus the simple fact of knowing causes feeling, and the latter produces desire and stimulate the exercise of the will
The soul is not only the knower (jñātr), but is also the doer or agent (kartr) and the enjoyer or sufferer (bhoktr). Hence, the manifestation of consciousness in a mundane soul takes the three forms of activity: the cognitive, the conative or volitional, and the enjoying of suffering (of the fruits of karman), respectively known as jñāna-cetanā, karma-cetanā and karmaphala-cetanā. Every living being in its worldly and bodily existence is also instinctively urged by certain basic or primary appetites, such as hunger (including thirst), fear, sex, and acquisitiveness, which are called the four sañjñās. The feelings corresponding to these instincts colour the consciousness accordingly.
Of the eight categories of the karman, the vedaniya is supposed to be responsible for causing the feeling of pleasure and pain. This feeling may be described as the sense-feeling as it is