Immortality and Joy

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

Page 6

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This is suffcient authority for the view that Jainism strongly condemns fetish worship-the cult of rivers, stones and the like-as well as devotion to human and super-human beings who have not eradicated their lower nature, that is to say who are liable to be swayed by passion and by personal likes a id dislikes. What, then, is the significance of the image-worship which takes place daily in our temples, and which is, undoubtedly, the cause of the false impression that has been formed by the non- -Jainas concerning our faith?
To explain the nature of the worship that is performed in our temples, it is necessary first of all to summarise the Jaina creed, which fully accounts for it. The Jainas believe that every soul is godly by nature and endowed with all those attributes of perfection which are associated with our truest and best conceptions of divinity. These divine attributes-omniscience, bliss and the like-are, however, not actully manifest in the case of the soul that is involved in transmigration, but will become so when it attains to nirvana.
Nirvana implies complete freedom from all those impurities of sin which limit and curtail the natural attributes and properties of the soul. Accordingly, the Jainas aspire to become Gods by crossing the sea of samsara (births and deaths), and the creed they follow to obtain that devoutly-wished-for consummation is the method which was followed by those who have already reached the goal in view