Ethical Doctrines in Jainism

SR No.: 006955
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Kamalchand Sogani
Publisher: Jain Sanskruti Samrakshak Sangh Solapur
Publication Year: 2001
Total Pages: 322
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 8 MB

Page 223

VI. MYSTICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF JAINA ETHICS
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and is the spiritual leader of society. He is beyond attachment, aversion and infatuation, and consequently he is absolutely dispassionate.2 By virtue of his intuitively apprehending the nature of reality, as also the implications of the sacred text, all his doubts have been resolved. The perfected mystic has been able to adorn himself with self-control, since he has abandoned all Himsā and has resisted the temptations of senses and mind. He has also subdued anger, lust, greed etc., by performing the internal and external austerities. In mystical language we may say that with the emergence of the Atmanic experience and steadfastness in it, the conquest over the mind, the senses, and the passions becomes natural to him, i.e., a thing flowing from his intrinsic nature. By virtue of his selfrealisation, and of having achieved sublime concentration and owing to his simultaneous establishment in the triune path of right belief, right knowledge and right conduct, he has transcended the dualities of friends and enemies, pleasure and pain, praise and censure, life and death, sand and gold.5. And yet in spite of this transcendence, he embraces reconcilable contradictions; he is self-established yet all pervading, is knowing all things yet detached, is associated with great longevity, yet devoid of senility. The transcendent mystic has manifested pure consciousness, destroyed the destructive Karmas, and attained supersensuous knowledge, infinite potency and unique resplendence. As a consequence of which all his desires for bodily pleasures and pains vanish immediately. The infinite life of the mystic has rendered possible the emergence of omniscience which possesses the potency of completely, simultaneously and intuitively or unassistedly1o apprehending all the substances along with their present and absent modificationsll in contradistinction to the limited life of sensuous knowledge which cognises substances incompletely, successively and intellectually or assistedly,12 In view of the fact of
1 Svayambhů. 35. 2 Prava. I-14 and Comm. Amrta. 3 Prava. I-14, II-105. 4 Prava. Comm. Ampta. I-14.. 5 Prava. I. 14, III-41, 42. 6 Vişāpahāra Stotra, 1. 7 That is called supersensuous knowledge which knows any substance, with or without space points, with or without form and those modifications which have not come
into existence and those which are destroyed. (Prava. 1-41, Trans. Upadhye. p. 6). 8 Prava. I-15, 19. Ibid. I. 20. 10 Unassistedly:-Without the help of senses light, and mind. (Sat. Vol. 1-9. p. 191). 11 Absent modifications:-Those which have never originated and those in fact that
have been and are already destroyed are the absent modifications (Prava. I-38, Upadhye. p. 5) 12 Prava. I-21, 51. Prava. 1-40, 50.