Essence of Jainism

Author(s): Jyoti Prasad Jain
Publisher: Shuchita Publication Varanasi

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attained emancipation in life, becoming allknowing, all-perceiving, full of compassion for all, and immune to all feelings of attachment and aversion, like and dislike. There is also a large pantheon of godlings, celestials or angels, who are superhuman but not supermen, are divine beings but not divinities or deities. The only divinities or deities are the Arhantas and the Siddhas, who are adored and are worth adoring. After them come the true ascetic saints who pursue the path of the Jina in earnest.
The Jaina theory of knowledge is a highly developed one, which also deals with the validity of knowledge, based on a comprehensive apprehension of reality as also the various individual view-points revealing the different aspects of the multi-sided reality. This conception of reality as being manifold, highly complex and pluralistic in character, gave the Jaina system the name 'the philosophy of Anekanta or Syadvada.' In fact Anekanta is concerned with the
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