Introduction to Jaina Sadhna

Author(s): Sagarmal Jain
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith

Page 36

The Main Objective of Jainism : 29
understand human nature. By human nature we mean man's organic and psychological make-up. What do we mean by a living organism ? What is the difference between a living and a non-living organism ? By living-organism we mean an organism that has the power to maintain its physiological equilibrium. In Biology this process is known as homoestasis, which is considered as an important quality of a living organism. The second essential quality of a living organism is its capacity for adjustment to its environment. Whenever a living organism fails to maintain its physiological equilibrium and to adjust itself to its environment, it tends towards death, Death is nothing but an utter failure of this process of maintaining equilibrium. Thus we can say that where there is life there are efforts to avoid unequilibrium and to maintain equilibrium.
Psychologically nobody wants to live in a state of mental tension. We like relaxation and not tension, satisfaction and not anxiety; this shows that our psychological nature working in us is for mental peace or mental equanimity. Freud accepts that there is a conflict between our ld and Super-ego but at the same time he agrees that our Ego or conscious level is always working to maintain equanimity or for the adjustment between these two poles of our personality, the ideal and the real. It is a fact that there are mental states such as emotional excitements, passions, anxieties and frustrations, but they do not form our essential nature because they do not exist for their own sake. Either they seek their satisfaction from some external objects or we want to get rid of these mental states. They are thus, the resultant expressions ( vibhāva) of our self. An important process or our life is the process of adjustment, and at the mental level adjustment is nothing but a process of restoring mental peace, harmony and integration. In this way we can say that the Jaina concept of equanimity or samatva as the real