Anandrushi Abhinandan Granth

Author(s): Vijaymuni Shastri, Devendramuni
Publisher: Maharashtra Sthanakwasi Jain Sangh Puna

Page 775

आचार्य प्रवास अमिर देन प्रामानन्द अन्थ કાવાયાઅમ
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Dr. Bashishtha Narain Tripathi, M.A., D. Phil.
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discipline, the entire range of Indian thought can be classified under three main heads :
(1) There were thinkers who did not accept freedom or antonomy of spirit in any form. The Chārvāka denied the existence of the individual self apart from the physical body and rediculed the very notion of salvation. piece of nature and constituted by a conglomeration of natural ingredients, conscious or man, can have on value other than gross bodily pleasures. The question of freedom does not arise. This theory culminates in a rigorous form of determinism (Niyativäda) and has been condemned as pernicious and inimical to the spiritual life.
(2) There were philosophers and religious man, such as Buddha and Mahavira, who accepted what we might call immanent freedom as felt and exercised in human environment. Every man's suffering is evidence of this freedom. The Budha, took his stand, like Kant, on the moral act, the immanent freedom implicit in man's endeavour to better his condition. The emphasis is on our self-effort and right exercise of one's volition. The Mahāvīra as well as Buddha were led to deny two opposed standpoints; one was naturalism (Svabhava-vada) or nihilism (uccheda-vāda), which totally denied, as is done by the Chārvāka or Ajivikās, the Moral Law (free act and its results, Karma and Karma-phala), and reduced man to a fortuitous coglomeration of natural forces; the other opposed standpoint was that of eternalism (Sásvatavada), which stood for the transcendent freedom of God (and even of an unchanging soul or ätman), who is above the moral law (Karma). The Buddha characterised both uccheda-väda and śäsvata-väda as specimens of inactivism (akriyavāda).
(3) The third class is represented by the Hindu (Brahmanical) which is some form or other accepted a free, transcendent Being (God) besides the finite selves. It is not that this free being achieved his freedom after destroying his previous bondgge, but he is eternally free (Sadaiva-muktaḥ) and transcendent. (Sadaiva-Isvarah). If for Jainism and Buddhism the fundamental is the moral consciousness and the spiritual urge for purifying the mind of its passions, the fundamental of Hinduism is God-consciousness; and the God is exaltation and deitification. The Vedas which are the fountain source of all form of Hinduism, are intoxicated with the idea of God, of a transcendent Being, ever free and ever Lord. Religion, for them was not laboured suppression of passion, of control and regiment as Buddhism, but a relationship with the transcendent through prayer and devotion.
According to the Jain philosophy, the jiva or the living individual is cetana (conscious), pure and perfect. "What knows and perceives the various objects, desires, pleasures, and dreads, pains acts beneficially or harmfully and experiences the fruits thereof that is Jiva". The soul is associated with various kinds of Karmas. The Karmas obstruct the various capacities of the soul and keep it tied to the wheel of wordly existence. The soul loses its luminosity due to its contact with Karmic matter. From the empirical standpoint it comes