Anandrushi Abhinandan Granth

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

Page 785

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34
Dr. Bashishtha Narain Tripathi
errors. Though this system admit this plurality quantitatively, yet still, looking with other view-points it is quantitatively. This error may be avoided by accepting this plurality empirically. They ought to welome monism as the final logic (śuddha-naya) noumenal unity of the soul. Dr. C. D. Sharma is more consistent on this point when he holds that “When Jainism has rejected all qualitative differences in souls as well as in atoms, why should it inconsistently stick to numerical differences which are only nominal and not real. No attempt is made to synthesise jiva and Pudagala, spirit and matter, subject and object, into a higher unity."70 Jainism holds that the jivas are infinite not only in bondage but also in liberation. They make no sincere attempt to synthesise the plurality of the liberated souls like orthodox schools of Indian philosophy. In the absence of a divine ruler, the Siddhasilā gets failure in giving us a picture of the Society of the liberated. The Jaina thinkers have endeavoured to replace the notion of God (īśvara) by having an 'Arhan', a Jiva who has achieved the highest stage, endowed with all such attributes as we find in Iśvara. But ‘Arhan' is after all, a jīva, or a human being and there can be many 'Arhans', at the same time, through Sadhana. But, a jīva, eveu after it has achieved the Isvaratva, will remain a jiva. This is why Prof. Radhakrishanan observes, "Since the severally simple religion of the Jainas did not admit grace or forgiveness, it could not appeal to the masses."71
Jainism is characterised by a profound and absolute pessinism with respect to the nature of the world. Matter is not finally a transformation of spirit but a permanently existing substance, concrete and ineradicable, made up of atoms and capable (like clay) of taking many forms. Different form matter, imprisoned within it and working upon it from within are souls. The goal of Jaina religions practice is to release these jīvas from their entanglement with matter. Man is fettered because he goes on acting and doing, every deep bringing an accumulation of new entanglements; the way to victory, therefore, resides in absolute in action. The jīva then breaks free into absolute release (kaivalya) perfect isolation. This condition is not regarded by the Jainas as reabsorption into any ultimate universal substance. On the contrary, the individual jīva, the Monad, simply ascends, like a free baloon, to the Zenith of the organism of the universe, there to remain for ever and ever, together with all baloons-each absolutely self-existent and self-contained, immobile, against the ceiling of the world. The space occupied by each of the perfected ones is boundless. The perfected ones are all-aware.
References : 1 Pancāstikāya-Samayasāra, Qd. in Indian Philosophy: S. Radhakrishnan ;
Volume 1, P. 314. 2 Tattvārthasūtra, VIII. I. 3 A. B. Lathe : An Introduction to Jainism, Bombay, 1905, pp. 9 ff. 4 Tattvārthasūtra, VIII, 2-3. 5 Uvaogassa anāri parināmi mohajuttassa micchattam aņņānam aviradibhāvo
ya nādavvo. Samaya sāra, 96.