________________
The Heritage of the Last Arhat
It is clear that all such principles, put in action, guarantee such an amount of happiness and peace within the whole brotherhood of living creatures, such a paradise like state of general bliss, that one should wish them to be universally adopted and followed, to the benefit of all that lives. Perfect Individual Welfare warranted by Jainism
On the other hand, it is true, they presuppose what appears to be a kind of sacrifice on behalf of the individual.
This apparent sacrifice at the cost of which that state of general well-being is being brought about, consists in a certain amount of personal happiness, or of expedients of the latter, which the individual has evidently to renounce, in the case of even the most insignificant of the Pratyākhyānas, and in every one of its positive altruistic efforts.
It is clear that the equilibrium of personal and general wellbeing would indeed remain incomplete, and Jainism could not be said to have fulfilled its noble task in the ideal way claimed before, if the individual world feel the apparent sacrifice to be an infringement on its happiness. In reality, however, both the sides are in perfect equilibrium, for there are deliberations which not only reconcile the individual with that so-called 'sacrifice', but make it realize that it is, on the contrary, benefitted by it, and that this benefit by far outweighs the apparent disadvantage.
First of all, the motivation of the very 'sacrifice' is, as we saw, an egotistic one : for if the individual submits to those restrictions, it does so in order to avoid the binding of unfavourable Karma, and therewith the storing up of latent suffering; and if it recurs to those actions of positive altruism, it does so in order to bind favourable Karma, and to secure latent happiness.
And it performs both the kinds of actions, those of negative as well as those of positive altruism, with the assistance of certain of its own natural dispositions, which form part of its 'conscience'. I
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org