Gems of Jainism

Author(s): Hemant Shah
Publisher: Academy of Philosophy

Page 70

Reason and Faith in Jainism
thinkers were (i) the distaste for dialectical analysis,(ii)emphasis upon innate traces of God in the soul of man, and (iii) the claim that no one is really an atheist and that all moral experience is grounded in an inbred consciousness of the person of God. J. F. Ross, in discussing the salient characteristics of this approach to religion, discusses 'Faith and Reason' in great details and fundamentally. Its approach statement is “BOTH THE ACTIVITY OF FAITH AND THE ACTIVITY OF REASON ARE ALWAYS OF ARRIVING AT KNOWLEDGE. This has a substantial and important claim: Both faith and reason are ways of arriving at knowledge of God and God's will for men."10
When we consider Jain scriptures and its canonical works the question would be, do they consider faith to be a source of anything more than belief or opinion? In Jainism, it is not so. Let us see how. The term “belief, in general, and particularly in religion and religious texts functions in many ways. Belief in Jainism is often designating a state of adherence to a preposition or to a way of life, to a state of opinion or a state of knowledge. Jainism has always tenaciously insisted that faith is not merely a source of knowledge but of vision too. In Jainism, though faith (shraddhā) is a state, it is also an activity.According to Jain scriptures, "friendliness (Maitri), activity (Pramoda), compassion (Karunā) and neutrality (Madhyasma) are four qualities basically required in the foundation of religion."11 Shri Haribhadra Suri gives a great importance to equanimity or right faith (Samyakkarma). According to him, the right faith has five inevitable attributes.
These are (1) recitation of verses (Sutrokti), (2) Concentration of mind while worshiping (Upayoga), (3) doubtlessness (Asanka Tyāga), (4) equanimity (SamyakDrsti), and (5) devotion (bhakti)
So according to Jaina concept of Sadhanā (religious activity) right faith is the foundation.
In one of the canonical works of Jainism, Bhaktirasam it abindu ? 1 & 2 the Aradhanā or Sadhana consists of ten activities, of which the very first is 'faith' (Sraddha). Thus we find faith, both