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WHOM DO THE JAINS WORSHIP? 171 purged of love, hatred and ignorance, its Svabhava (true nature), -infinite knowledge, infinite seeing, infinite happiness and infinite power--becomes manifest and it acquires Godhood. If you look into the Jain scriptures, you will find that this religion teaches the worship --not of any object or of any particular soul, .but of Paramatman Svarup.-of infinite knowledge, infinite seeing, infinite happiness, infinite power and Vitragta (passionlessness). The Jains attach the greatest importance to Vitragta, because without it, the other attributes of Paramatman cannot exist.
There have always been spiritually advanced persons who, having abandoned Raga (love) Dvesha (hatred) and Moha (ignorance) have manifested in themselves the above-named attributes and have obtained the Parama Pada_(Perfect Status of Divinity.) It is these Deified Personages to whom the Jains pay their reverence and homage. In every cycle, twenty-four out of such Personages, become eminent; they show the path of Dharma to the worldly souls and are consequently called Tirthankaras. The Jain temples contain the images of these Tirthan. karas ; and the Jains worship these Tirthankaras through their images. Some people include the Jains among the worshippers of stocks and stones and assert that it is through the Jains t at idolatry prevailed among the Hindus. They impute all the evils of the system prevalent among the Hindus to the Jains ; but, if they give up prejudice and consider over the matter dispassionately they will find that the Jain idea and way of worshipping the images of their Tirthankaras can in no way bear the imputation of stone-worship or of other phases of idolatry.
Now the first argument which these persons adduce, is that the image is made of dead matter ; man himself has made it; and that man can derive no benefit from the worship of a thing which is dead matter and which the man himself has made. In the first place, the objection that a material thing made by man himself cannot benefit or harm man, is wrong. The mere fact of a thing being material and being made by man is no argument for the proposition that it cannot affect man. Observation shows that such a thing does injure or benefit man according to the Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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| SR No. | 034890 |
| Book Title | Jaina Gazette 1928 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Ajitprasad, C S Mallinath |
| Publisher | Jaina Gazettee Office |
| Publication Year | 1928 |
| Total Pages | 502 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 33 MB |