Jainism in North India

SR No.: 011067
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Chimanlal J Shah
Publisher: Longmans Green and Compny London
Publication Year: 1932
Total Pages: 66
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 3 MB

Page 81

JAINISM IN NORTH INDIA (Brahmacar ya) and non-attachment (Aparigraha), and the threefold restraint of the mind, speech and body, Jaina discipline goes to the final stage of a man's spiritual career when he desires neither life nor death, and when he may take up the vow of Anasana, which in a stricter sense means "fasting which precedes and ends with death." 2 The whole Jaina discipline has been so minutely and exhaustively worked out that it would make a study by itself 3 We shall merely state here in brief all that we have already said about the Jaina view of life and salvation, and then pass on to some other salient features of Jamism. To sum up, in the words of Kundakundacarya : "The soul which is the agent of its own Karma, and the enjoyer of the fruits thereof, as conditioned by its own Karma, gets blinded by the veil of ignorance and roams about in the world of Samsara, which is limited for the faithful and unlimited for the unfaithful. "Suppressing or annihilating the veil of ignorance which clouds the faculty of perception and wall, well equipped with the Three Jewels, the undaunted pilgrim that has conquered the suffering and pain due to environment, beckoned by the ideal of selfknowledge wades through the paths and reaches the Divine city of Perfection 4 Thus when once the soul, overpowered with the four Kasayas (passions)--anger, vanity, intrigue and greed--and the senses, and perforce kept away from its natural state by good and bad energies called Karmas, gets free from all such obstructive and foreign forces, it is said to enjoy all the attributes of God. "By the absence of Karma, Omniscient and embracing the whole world in its view, it attains undisturbable, supersensual and infinite bliss" Really speaking such a soul puts forward the ideal of God in the 1 wfger H ar Set: Hemicandra, op al, chap 1, v. 19, ing and pain The undaunted pm and wall, well cognorance which : HTUTTT W u -Ullarodhyayana-Satra, chap XXX, O 1 " The value of Jaina philosophy lies not only in the fact that it, unlike Hinduism, has co-related ethical teaching with its mctaphysical system but also in the atazing knowledge of human nature which its ethics desplay"_Stevenson (Mrs), op at, p 128 Kundakundachryn, Panicastuhayasara, S.B ,, 75-70 * "In a word, believers in the creation theory make God man, bring him down to the level of need and imperfection. whereas Jainism raises man to Godhood and inspires lum to reach as near Godhood as possible by steady fath, right perfection, nght knowledge, and above all, a spotless life"-Jaini, op cit, P 5 * Kundakundcarya, op cit, v 151 (trans Jaini, op cit, p 77) 44