Jaina Mysticism and Other Essays

SR No.: 006933
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Kamalchand Sogani
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy
Publication Year: 2002
Total Pages: 166
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 17 MB

Page 63

of duty is to aim beyond itself. There can no more be a duty to act, if there is no good to attain by it, than to think if there is no truth to be won by thinking.”8. Thus, duty is an extrinsic good, good as a means, this does not deprive duty of its importance in ethical life, just as health does not become unimportant by its being extrinsic good. The pursuance of Aņuvratas for the householder and the Mahāvratas for the Muni may be regarded as dutiful actions.
Here it may be said that rightness or wrongness of an action does not depend upon the goodness, or badness of consequences, but upon the motive or motives from which it is done. We can find references in Jaina ethical texts wherein good motives are given prime importance for the performance of action producing good consequences. So long as good motives issue in right action productive of good consequences, there is nothing wrong in accepting the dependence of rightness of action on good motive. Jaina ethics seems to tie good motives with the rightness of actions producing good consequences. Its conviction is that if there is good motive like kindness or charitable disposition, right actions are bound to occur. At one stage in man's moral evolution it may be possible; at ordinary man's level this may not happen. Since Jaina ethics, it seems to me, could not evenly face the problem arising from the fact that sometimes good dispositions are not able to produce right actions issuing in good consequences, it made rightness of action productive of good identical with good motive. But the point is that such actions are not so blameworthy as they would have been if they had been done from bad motives. No doubt the agent deserves praise for acting as he did, but the action is wrong.
Jaina ethics seems to confuse that to call an action morally praiseworthy is the same thing as to say that it is right, and to call it morally blameworthy is the same thing as to say that it is wrong'. In point of fact these two judgements are not identical. It so often happens that a man may act wrongly from a good motive, i.e. conscientiousness may lead to fanatical cruelty, mistaken asceticism etc. and he may act rightly from a bad
Jaina Mysticism and other essays