Mahavira Jayanti Smarika 1978

SR No.: 014024
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Bhanvarlal Polyaka
Publisher: Rajasthan Jain Sabha Jaipur
Publication Year: 1978
Total Pages: 300
Language: Hindi, English
Classification: Seminar & Articles
File Size: 7 MB

Page 272

everything, personas endeavour be- eomes me ningless. 12 Sartre also denied God in the same vein in order to make room for human feedm. He also argues that if everything regar- ding human existence is from before in the mind of God, human life becomes completely determined. It is not what man makes by his personal effort but what has teen preordained by God. "Thus each individual man is the realization of a certain concep tion "13 But, in fact, man is the maker of himself and his own distiny. This necessarily eads to the deni) of God Feuerbach also declared, “our enemy is Go: The denial of God is the beginning of wisdom.” Comte found God to be a blemish for human dignity and an obstacle in human progress. Hence he says, “The sole effect of its (th-istic) doctrine is to
doctrine is to degrade the affections by unlimited desires, and to we ken the character by servile terrors."14
vira was born in the Republic of the Licchavis, he had the republican attitude and hence he considered every individual self to be real and ind pendent. In his conception of heaven every self is God— “Aham Indra", and nobody is under the subjugation of any other being. Like Freud, he also decried the religion of self-surrender (Samarpana) which is nothing but regression to childhood den to childhood-depandence on Father. Mahavira wanted that man should come out of the dream of his infancy, te adult and educated to reality, and take charge of his own existence. Jung also found that "it is the prime task of all education (of adults) to convey the archetype of the God-image, or its emanations and effects, to the conscious mind."15 For, as Frieda Fordham observed, "If this does not happen there is split in his nature; he may be outwardly civilized, but inwardly he is a barbarian ruled by an achaic god.''16 Mahavira exhorted man to realize and perfect his own self ra!her than surrendering before a Deity presiding over the phenomena Deity n of the universe. He propounded a "religion of self-effort”, and declared that a man becomes Sramana by dint of his own labour (samayaye samano hoi).17 Religion consists in self-awakening. (Sutta amuni, munina saya jagaranti), 18
Now the question arises, where- from do we have the notion of God ? According to Freud, the notion of God is born of the infantile d pendence on Father. "God nothing but father's image.” Mahavira also believed that God is the symbol of authority. It is the legacy of Monarchy. Man imagines a world-Ru'er in the image of the Ruler of state.15 But as Maha-
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