Ethical Doctrines in Jainism

Author(s): Kamalchand Sogani
Publisher: Jain Sanskruti Samrakshak Sangh Solapur

Page 35

METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF JAINA ETHICS
name ‘Magadhan religion . We should no more assess the Sāmkhya, Jaina, Buddhistic and Ājīvaka tenets as mere perverted continuations of stray thoughts selected at random from the Upanisadic bed of Aryan thought current. The inherent similarities in these systems as against the essential dissimilarities with Aryan (Vedic and Brahmanic) religion and the gaps that a dispassionate study might detect between the Vedic (including the Brāhmaṇas) and Upanişadic thought currents, really point out to the existence of an indigenous stream of thought?.” Hence we may conclude that Jaina monachism and therefore Jaina ethics is Magadhan in origin.
CHAPTER II
Metaphysical Basis of Jaina Ethics
DEPENDENCE OF ETHICS ON METAPHYSICS: According to Jainism, ontological discussions necessarily determine ethical considerations. The ethical enquiry derives its meaning from the metaphysical speculation. Our conduct and behaviour are conditioned by our metaphysical presuppositions. The incentive to the progress of moral consciousness emerges from a deep and sound metaphysical theory which requires proper application of logic to experience. Samantabhadra argues that the conceptions of bondage and liberation, Punya and Pāpa, heaven and hell, pleasure and pain and the like lose all their relevancy and significance, if we exclusively recognise either permanence or momentariness as constituting the nature of substance. This statement clearly points to the dependence of ethics on metaphysics. Again, the affirmation that the momentary disintegration of all things renders impossible the financial transactions, the fact of memory, and the commonplace relations of the husband and the wife, the teacher and the taught and the like also indicates the subservience of ethical problems to the nature of beings. In the following pages, therefore, it is proposed to dwell, in the first place, upon the general nature of reality; and secondly, upon the mode
1 Brhatkathākoşa, Intro. p. 12; also Pravacanasāra. Pref. pp. 12-13. 2 Apta-mimāṁsā. 40-41.; Yuktyanusāsana. 8-15.; Cf. Syādvddamañjari. 27. ,3 Yuktyanusāsana. 16-17.