Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin 3

SR No.: 522603
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: R P Poddar
Publisher: Research Institute of Prakrit Jainology & Ahimsa Mujjaffarpur
Publication Year: 1982
Total Pages: 294
Language: English, Hindi
Classification: Magazine, India_Vaishali Institute Research Bulletin, & India
File Size: 6 MB

Page 81

COMMON SENSE ELEMENTS IN JAIN PHILOSOPHY YUGAL KISHORE MISHRA
Jainism by and large is a commonsense philosophy. Its various concepts have been formulated with the seemingly main objective of presenting a popular explanation of the problems pertaining to life and world suited to the understanding or the means of ordinary people. Besides, the various tenets developed by it seems acknowledgeable by the vast majority of men as 'first truths'. Mr. Reid emphasizing a truism about matters of common-sense says that they lie within "the reach of common understanding". And, again, "in matter of commonsense everyman is no less a competent judge than a mathematician is in a mathematical demonstration".
The common sensical stance of Jainism may have been occassioned by its very early and primitive origin. But undoubtedly, its outlook weighed much in formulating its ideas. Quite in consonance with its anti-Vedic outlook; and its primary aim to propogate an independent religious way of life for the common mass, Jainism gave rise to a very rudimentary and popular view of life. Dr. Jacobi's view that Jainism was in the first place a religion and developed a philosophy of its own in order to make this religion, a self-consistent system is very appropriate and relevant in the present context. He has also rightly remarked that Jainas have worked upon popular notions of a more primitive and cruder character.
The various features of Jain philosophy discussed here go to show its common-sense approach. Jainism like many other Indian systems begins with a pessimistic view of life. The worldly existence is all painful and as such worth shunning. It is a general conviction that this worldly life despite its occassional allurements and adjustments is beset with miseries, hardships and obstacles. But it is also a workable truism that in order to make life worth living and enduring, some signs of hope and redemption is worked out in the form of a goal or ideal. Jainism too conceives of liberation as the ultimate end of life in which all sufferings are removed and the cycle of birth and death is stopped for ever. Thus a picture of sorrowful state of affairs in the world and a lingering hope of a happy turn-over is very common-sensical.
Now achievement of the ideal of life i.e. liberation becomes possible according to Jainism when one is endowed with right knowledge. Ignorance is root of all evils and knowledge alone can dispel it to make room for the