Essence of Jainism

Author(s): Sukhlal Sanghavi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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Essence of Jainism
your duties in life and desire to live as much as you will. If one takes recourse to this attitude, no boodage of thirst of passions
bstructs, no other attachment persists The Tšāvāsya Upanişad was very greatly helped humanity in its march towards the sublimation of the perspective of religion by giving expression to tbe Final meaning of this desireless perspective. The Tšāvāsya Upanişad is the very basis of the lofty mansion of the Gitā.
Mahāvira practised great Sadhana in order to uproot the blemish of thirst and the other blemishes that spring from it Buddha took to similar Sadhana in his own way. But the general society adopted only a limited meaning that blemishes like thirst, violence, fear etc., should be got over. From this the inclination of the common man nourished and developed preventive or negative duties such as 'not to do this' or 'not to resort to ibat.' The side of developing prescriptive and prohibitive duties became subsidiary in the whole country almost We can view this in the religious order of King Asoka. Again, under the same state, the spirit of the Mahāyāna cult wat born. It was then again that so many mendicants continued to develop this spirit in their own way. In Gujarat, in the sixth century, Śântideva went to the extent of stating" What is the use of that interestless liberation, that is merged in sorrow?” In the India of medieval and later ages, the country was gifted with so many saints, thinkers and promulgators of perspective of religion. But the sublimation that we have witnessed of our own prespective of religion in our life, and as we witaess it to-day, seems to us positively to be the highest stage of the development of perspective of reiigion in the whole world so far.
(Darsan ane ciotan, pt. 1, pp. 72 75)
Two Religious Institutions; the one centred in householder's stage and the other in that of renubciation :
In our country, mainly two types of religious institutions continue to exist. Their roots are older than even Tathagata. Buddha and Nirgranthanātha Mabāvira. One of these two is centred in the stage of ibe householder, the otber in the stage of Samnyasa or total renunciation. The maintenance and nourishment