Mahavira Jayanti Smarika 1975

SR No.: 014031
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Bhanvarlal Polyaka
Publisher: Rajasthan Jain Sabha Jaipur
Publication Year: 1975
Total Pages: 446
Language: English, Hindi
Classification: Seminar & Articles
File Size: 11 MB

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set up. Mahavira maintained that man can attain happiness by conquering himself by himself. Marx also held that man can be the master of circumstances and can mend his lot by his own efforts. However, Marx's emphasis is more on the overthrowing of the existing social order than on rectroining oneself, because he believed that man suffers not because of his own fault but also because of the wrong social set-up. In the bourgeois set up the proletariats are bound to suffer for no fault of their own. Hence, human progress and happiness consistin eradicating the burgeois set up and constructing up a new in which there will be no class-distinction. But Mahavira believed that man's sufferings are the result of his own actions and hence his emphasis is more on restraining one's own self.10 However, both of them are for the happiness and welfare of humanity.
Both Mahavira and Marx emphasize on the principle, "Live and let others live." Parasapare pagraho jivanam11. They lay stress on self-development as well as the development of society. Mahavira believed that man is not only the body (Pudgala), but also the self and has infinite power, knowledge, freedom and bliss (Ananta catustaya), and his destiny is to realize these possibilities. Even being a materialist, Marx accep's the superiority of man and human values. According to Dr. Radhakrishnan, Marx even denies God for he believes in the potential divinity of man."12 Mahavira also held that man is God himself. Every self is God not because of being a part of any Absolute conscioueness but by virtue of possessing infinite powers in himself. Marx also wrote: "In the first method of approach (absolutism) the starting point is consciousness taken as living indivi dual, in the second method (communism), which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves and consciousness is conceived as their conscious. ness. "13 13 The all round development of personality is the aim of both Mahavira and Marx,
2. Dialectical Materialism.
Mahavira and Marx have similar views with regard to the nature and development of the universe. Though Mahavira is a spirituali.t, he does not minimise the importance of 'matter'. He accepts matter as the physical basis of the universe. According to him the universe comes into being by the modification of matter. Mahavira believes in the theory of auto-genetic creation (Svatah Sristivada) and maintains that the modification of matter is owing to the Law of
9. "Appanameva appanam jaitta suhamehaye" Uttaradhyayan sutra, 9.35, p. 178. 10. "Appa katta vikatta ya, dukkhan ya suhan ya" (Uttaradhyayan sutra 20-37). 11. Umaswami, Tattvartha sutra, 5-21.
12. Dr. Radhakrishnan, The concept of Man (Ed.), P.T. Raju., Preface. 13. "Feuerbach: Opposition of Materialistic and Idealistic Outlook", Selected Works, vol. I, p. 25.