Facets of Jaina Religiousness in Comparative Light

Author(s): L M Joshi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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JAINA CONCEPTION OF THE HOLY PENTAD
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tradition, and in turn sustains it." Faith, he continues, is an engagement, a capacity to be involved with the sacred and its manifestations. He believes that the majority of human beings on this earth, since the palaeolithic times, have been men and women of faith. Faith signifies that human quality that has been expressed in, has been elicited, nurtured, and shaped by, the religious traditions of the world.” He rightly affirms that "faith ... is the fundamental religious category; even the fundamental human category." These observations suggest that faith is the foundation of all forms of human religiousness and spiritual endeavour. Whether or not Jainism is called a 'religion', the fact remains that it represents a kind of faith or human quality which has successfully engaged a section of humanity, the Jaina community-in the task of growing in holiness in quest of transcendental perfection.
Jainism is called tirtha in the sense of human way of religious progress by persons in the course of conditioned existence. Its cofounders are called tirthankaras, those enlightened sages who made a “ford" (tirtha) to go beyond the sphere of conditioned existence, and for that purpose established an 'order' (tirtha) of the faithful.
Jainism is also called dharma in the sense of means of securing happiness for the beings and their freedem from sufferings of samsāra. It is called dharma also because it leads beings to and upholds them in the most desirable sphere (işta-sthāna). In essence dharma constitutes in the first place a way to good life and then to ultimate Release (mokşa). Right Vision' (samyagdarśana) is an integral, or as Professor Smith would like to say, a fundamental category in the framework of this dharma. The Jaina scholars usually translate darśana in this context as 'faith'. The fashionable custom of translating darśana in other contexts as 'philosophy' is rather inappropriate; 'view' or 'point of view' is a better rendering of the word darśana in the context of Indian systems of thought. The Jaina darśana' would mean the Jaina view of truth'.
Some writers seem to believe that Jainism was originally only a 'philosophy and that later on it developed as a 'religion'. Thus Williams has observed that "the essential change in Jainism during the medieval period is its transformation from a philosophy, a darśana, to a religion." This observation is rather inept. Jainism was a ‘religion' in the sense of tirtha or dharma from the time at least of Bhagavān Mahāvíra. It is, however, true that in early Jaina scriptures we find chiefly the exposition of ascetically oriented muni-dharma or yat yācāra and little is said about the religious practices of the lay folk. With the passage of time a significant body of texts known as Śrāvakācāras, manuals of religious conduct for devout men and women living in
4. WC. Smith, Faith and Belief, p. 5. 5. Ibid., p. 6. 6. Ibid., p. 7. 7. R. Williams, Jaina Yoga: A Survey of the Medieval Srävaka:āras, pp. XX-XXI.