Concept of Divinity in Jainism

Author(s): P Ajay Kothari
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 17

THE CONCEPT OF DIVINITY AT A GLANCE
Happiness is an ardent desire and instinct of every human being. No man is content with bare necessity or with what he gets in the natural course of life. He yearns for more and more happiness. He faces various kinds of difficulties when he tries to accomplish happiness. The variant words for happiness are --- ananda, sukha, rasa, shanti etc. in Sanskrit, and bliss, joy, peace etc. in English terminology.
Happiness is the enjoyment or pleasurable satisfaction attendant upon well-being or welfare of some kind or the other. According to Oxford English Dictionary : It refers to a “good fortune or luck in life or in a particular affair, success, prosperity”; “The state of pleasurable content-of mind which results from success or the attainment of what is considered good"; and "successful or felicitous aptitude.”
A man in different stages of evolution has different conceptions of happiness and different means to attain the same. He seeks happiness in one form or the other. It may be the same for himself or for others. One seeks his own happiness in his own way, i.e. egocentric. In its crudest form of egoistic happiness.it is identified with sensuous pleasure and its slogan is 'Eat, drink and be merry'. The finer form of egoistic happiness attaches a greater value to the satisfaction of mind, derived from the pursuit of knowledge. The supreme form of egoistic happiness is identified with moral and spiritual transformation of personality. From
|
THE CONCEPT OF DIVINITY IN JAINISM