Aspect of Jainology Part 1 Lala Harjas Rai

Author(s): Sagarmal Jain
Publisher: Parshwanath Shodhpith Varanasi

Page 77

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Jagdish Sahai
fame or in expectation of any return. 'Do good and forget it with its peformance'. This principle will make selfless service possible. When man begins to see his own good in the good of others, performance of selfless service becomes the prime duty of everyone. In the very act of serving others man forgets his little self. This is true self-sacrifice.
What is Self ?
Mistaking the Body for the self lies at the root of all misery from which humanity has so far been suffering. This is responsible for creating insatiable desires in man, which breed dissensions, distrust, en. mity, and all the evils and troubles that man is heir to in both his individual and corporate capacities. As fire cannot be quenched by pouring oil over it, which will make it burn all the more fiercely, the sensuous desires of the flesh only increase all the more by being gratified through self-indulgence. This is not the path of happiness. It brings only pain and misery. Happiness, bliss, and peace are attainable through spiritual realization, sublimation of desires, and the annihilation of that delusion which presents the gross body as the self. He who can merge his conditioned and limited self into the all-pervading universal Self, is truly happy in this world. Such a man alone can be the friend of all, the servant of all, None can set a limit to one's love for humanity except one's own pet sympathies and narrow predispositions. The highest catholicity and the utmost capacity for selfless service can exist side by side in the same individual. A society also can be constructed on such lines, for society is but an aggregate of individuals.
A man's interest can never be confined to the body alone. His Self, in fact, comprehends the whole universe as One with himself, because there is no meaning in considering man's existence Apart from the Cosmos as a whole. When he detaches his individual self from bodily attachments, he will comprehend the whole'. To comprehend the 'whole' is to Love one and all without distinction. In other words, it is to realize oneself in the 'whole' and the whole' in oneself. Truly, the word 'I' connotes not the individual little self but the omnipresent Soul or Self. The Self or Soul is one and the same in every being; so the 'I' cannot be more than one. Hence the individual soul is not apart from the real Self.