Lord Mahavira Vol 03

SR No.: 023278
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: S C Rampuria
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati Institute
Publication Year: 2001
Total Pages: 232
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 20 MB

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"Lord Mahâvîra new matter, and the karmic matter, already settled, disintegrates with time: whereupon, the true nature of life, or soul, is again, realized: radiant, possessed of infinite greatness and gloryomniscience itself.
This last form was presumably its original form.
Once the danger of contact with matter is realized, and the bonds broken, and life freed of matter, the liberated souls are liberated for ever.
Could it be that to the first life or soul, there was denied that one knowledge of all—the knowledge of the danger? And that for final liberation experience was essential? And could it be that life in its pristine form has, by very knowledge of life that has been sullied, suffered, cleaned and rested, learnt, too, of the danger, and the means of its avoidance, from those liberated lives who have themselves suffered and achieved; who have discovered too the means to keep clear from that which tarnished, to retain their purity: even learnt to use matter wisely?
Or is life, too, in a process of evolution, rising from the smallness of the one sense consciousness to higher and higher senses at last to god-hood?
Both thoughts are sublime: Jainism favours the second.
SUMMING UP
THERE is very strong reason to believe that the Upanishads have indented for their philosophy on Mahâvîra; and that the major faults of the former are due to their desire to plant, unsuccessfully, their pet thesis of one-ness (Advaitism)spirit being all-on to the duality (Dvaitism)—spirit and matter-of Jainism.
The philosophy of Mahâvîra is an almost perfect one, and the flaws in it are due rather to the largeness of the subject discussed than to the philosophy itself.
It is a live philosophy; ennobling and re-assuring.
It puts a supreme and beautiful value on life believing that when its fragments are disintegrated to a point almost of nothingness, there is danger to that small evolution losing itself for ever.
This philosophy gives a sanctity to life and its preservation. This sanctity of life, it insists, is the highest religion-the only evolution.