Compendium of Jainism

Author(s): T K Tukol, A N Upadhye
Publisher: Prasaranga Karnatak University Dharwar

Page 77

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CONCEPT OF GOD AND OF WORSHIP
Such a God is full of effulgence due to infinite knowledge and bliss. He has no desires or duties. He does not interfere in the affairs of men or inflict upon himself the management of worlds, and he would not waste his time in creative activity in any form. A God should have no unfulfilled purpose, or unsatisfied cravings or ambitions; and, for this reason, he should not manage or create a world."
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The concept of Arhat or God is quite consistent with the view that he cannot be a Creator, Ruler or Regulator of a world which is uncreated and eternal. Creation implies desire on the part of the God who wants to create; desire implies imperfection. A. B. Latthe has quoted the reasoning of an Acarya on this point: "If God created the universe, where was he before creating it? If he was not in space, where did he localise the universe ? How could a formless or immaterial substance like God create the world of matter? If the material is to be taken as existing, why not take the world itself as unbegun ? If the creator was uncreated, why not suppose the world to be itself-existing? ....Is God self-sufficient? If he is, he need not have created the world. If he is not, like an ordinary potter, he would be incapable of the task, since, by hypothesis, only a perfect being could produce it. If God created the world as a mere play of his will, it would be making God childish. If God is benevolent and has created the world out of his he wolud not have brought into existence misery as well as felicity."
grace,
In brief, the Jainas do not accept the view of the Naiyayika that the world is created by an intelligent agent who is God; nor do they accept that he is omnipresent because if he exists everywhere, he will absorb everything within himself, without leaving anything to exist outside him. They do not regard God as necessary to explain the universe. Each individual soul is divine in its nature and can attain perfection. The concept of God in Jaina philosophy is the divinity in man. Man can realise the same by cultivation of steady faith, right