Outlines of Jainism

SR No.: 007012
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: S Gopalan
Publisher: Wiley Eastern Private Limited New Delhi
Publication Year: 1973
Total Pages: 216
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 9 MB

Page 107

15
Emotions and Feelings
THE philosophic significance of analysing emotions and feelings
I consists in its suggesting to man ways and means of evolving himself to become the true human person that he essentially is. We may describe the aim of the psychological analysis as consisting in its catering to the innate need for a total integration of the human personality. Taking man as he is rather than what he ought to be, philosophers have referred to the different aspects of the human mind and especially to the dangers which accompany their lop-sided development. It is in the light of this that the Indian philosophers' repeated emphasis on mind-control becomes explicable. The classic way in which man is exhorted to attain personality-integration that we find in Indian thought has been to suggest to him that if he were to attain the ultimate end in life (variously described by Indian philosophers - both orthodox and heterodox) he has to look within' and rid himself of all the impurities that his soul is subjected to.
The aim of life, having been posited by the Jaina philosophers as regaining the pristine purity of consciousness we find them emphasizing the necessity to free the jīva from the ajīva. Since the particles of karma are directly responsible for the jīva-ajīva contact, purifying consciousness of its sloth ultimately consists in stopping the inflow of karma.
The Jaina theory of emotions and feelings is clearly discernible in the phenomenological analysis it gives of jīva. Though from a transcendental standpoint jīva is nothing but pure consciousness,