Jaina Philosophy

SR No.: 006901
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Virchand R Gandhi, Kumarpal Desai
Publisher: World Jain Confederation
Publication Year: 2009
Total Pages: 298
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 5 MB

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GO
OGLE Karmalsen
regard to the Cosmos. They teach that the total reality known as the Cosmos had no beginning and will have no end. More correctly speaking, the Cosmos did not come out of nothing and will never be annihilated. The substance, in the abstract sense, of the Cosmos is permanent; its activities are changing every moment. If Reality means the highest generalized idea we can form of whatever we come to know, it is the Being, Esse. It being the most abstract idea, it is not divisible. We may say it is one, without a second. Truly speaking, numbering does not apply to abstraction. If, however, reality means concrete substances having essentially different activities, different not only in degree but in kind, then we have two grand divisions of the Universe animate world and the inanimate world.
In the Jaina view, the inanimate world consists of matter, two kinds of ether, known as Dharmastikaya and Adharmastikaya, and space. The animate world consists of innumerable kinds of living beings, each being a centre of complex forces. Time may be figuratively called a substance, really meaning a generalized mode of thought in regard to the activities of beings and things.
The universe is not merely a congeries of the above mentioned substances, heaped together and set in activity by an extra cosmic creator, but is a system by itself, governed by laws inherent in its very constitution. Law is not to be understood in the sense of a rule of action prescribed by authority, but as a proposition which expresses the constant or regular order or certain phenomena, or constant mode of action of things and beings.
It is not a command but a formula to which things or beings conform precisely and without exception, of course, under definite circumstances and surroundings. Jainism, therefore, is not a theistic system in the sense of the belief of the existence of a god as the Creator and ruler of the universe. And still, the
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