First Steps to Jainism Part 2

Author(s): Sancheti Asso Lal, Manakmal Bhandari
Publisher: Sancheti Trust Jodhpur

Page 94

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First Steps to Jainism
in for tilling the soil, manuring, seeding, watering, deweeding, cutting, winnowing and so on.
11. Jain thinkers have laid great emphasis on this composite or non-absolutist-anekantwadi view—as much as that Acharya Siddhsen Diwakar has declared in his monumental work “Sanmati Tarka" :
कालो सहाव रिणयई पुव्वकयं पुरिसकारणेगंता, मिच्छत्तं ते चेव उ, समासो होति सम्मतं ।।
That is “to hold time, disposition, fate, past karma and exertion as valid severally or individually is false faith (mithyatva). To hold them jointly or relatively valid is right faith (samyakatva).”
12. However, exertion or Pursharth has been given the prime place amongst the five samvya. It is the first amongst the five equals. The reasons are not far to seek.
13. Firstly, exertion is the only active agent. While time, fate, etc. are non-living and, therefore, inactive and dormant, exertion is the result of active efforts of the living soul, and therefore, full of life. Again exertion attracts responsibility. The soul which exerts is responsible for the result of its efforts. There is no such responsibility attached to time, fate etc.
14. Further at least partly, if not fully, proper exertion can even change the course of time etc. Thus it is scientifically possible to grow crops out of season and the course of time can be modified. Similarly science can improve infertile soil, and purakrit is nothing but exertion or Purshart done in the past. Here also we find that effect of some type of Karma e.g. Niddhat Karma can be changed by proper exertion e g. tapasya. Similarly, it should be possible to adjust the course of fate by proper exertion.
15. This brings us to the subject under discussion and we find that though the living being is partly a free agent in as much as it is free to exert or do Purshart, it is also a slave of or bound by time, fate, disposition etc. However, to the extent that exertion or Purshart is the active and responsible agent, it is free to act and, therefore, has complete freedom of will. Following this one should do Pursbart without bothering about the result that may be the