Shrutsagar 2016 02 Volume 02 09

SR No.: 525307
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Hiren K Doshi
Publisher: Acharya Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir Koba
Publication Year: 2016
Total Pages: 36
Language: Gujarati
Classification: Magazine, India_Shrutsagar, & India
File Size: 4 MB

Page 13

SHRUTSAGAR
11
February-2016
Sankara in fact, creates a man of straw, imputes to him imaginary doctrines, and by refuting them, he knocks him down. That is his glory.
I shall now state a few of the first principles of the Jain philosophy. Its first teaching is that the universe is not merely a congeries of substances, heaped together and set in activity by an extra-cosmic creator, but is a system by itself, governed by laws inherent in its very constitution. Law is not to be understood in the sense of a rule of action prescribed by authority, but as a proposition which expresses the constant or regular order of certain phenomena, or the constant mode of action of things or beings under certain definite circumstances. It is not a command, but a formula to which things or beings conform precisely, and without exception under definite relations, internal and external. Jainism, therefore, is not a theistic system in the sense of belief in the existence of a God as the Creator and Ruler of the universe; and still the highest being in the Jain view is a person, and not impersonal, characterless, qualityless being. All that there is in or of the universe may be classified under two heads: (1) Sentient, animate or conscious beings (a) liberated beings; (b, embodied beings); and (2) Insentient, inanimate or unconscious things or substances. There is not an inch of space in the universe where there are not innumerable minute living beings. They are smaller than the minutest things we can see with the aid of a microscope. Weapons and fire are to gross to destoy them. Their life and death depend on their vital forces, which are, of course, related to the surroundings. Clay, stones, etc., as they come fresh from the earth have life. Water, besides being the home of many living beings, is itself an assemblage of minute animate creatures. Air fife, and even lighthing have life. Strictly speaking, the physical substance of clay, water, sone, etc., is a multitude of bodies of living beings. Dry clay, dry stone, boiled water, are pure matter, and have no life. Vegetables, trees, fruits have life. When dried or cooked there is no file in them. Worms, insects, fish, birds, animals, human beings, are all living beings. There are living beings on stars and planets, and even beyond the starry region. "Life" is only an abstraction. It is not something concrete, superadded to the constituent elements of living beings. It is a generalization, derived