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INTRODUCTION TO JAINISM
Brotherhood and compassion, as well as disinterest concerning worldly desires and attachments are therefore described as the character qualities of a man or woman who has experienced this first spark of enlightenment. As P.S. Jaini writes in his The Jaina path of Purification:80 «Whereas the compassion felt by an ordinary man is tinged with pity or with attachment to its object, anukampā is free of such negative aspects; it develops purely from wisdom . . . and it fills the individual with an unselfish desire to help other souls towards moksha.”
The spark of enlightenment has also opened the mind in such a way that one can effectively reflect on such universal questions as all human beings have, but which cannot be solved by the brain mind and a materialistic approach alone, such as "what is death?”; “what is the purpose of life?"; "what are the laws which govern life and the universe?”; “what is the inner structure of the universe and of man, composed of living forces and of intelligent beings?” A man who has caught this glimpse of the nature of the soul, or even if he has only seriously taken notice of the possibility, will never again entirely stumble into the pitfalls of materialistic nihilism or of dogmatism - the two spooks which haunt our western sciences and many religions.
P.S. Jaini makes a most interesting statement when he writes about compassion which “develops purely from wisdom” and “fills the individual with an unselfish desire to help other souls towards moksha.” “If this urge to bring all tormented beings out of samsāra is particularly strong and is cultivated, it may generate those auspicious karmas that later confer the status of Tīrthamkara upon certain omniscients. When present to a more moderate degree, anukampā [compassion] brings an end to exploitive and destructive behavior, for even the lowest animal is now seen as intrinsically worthwhile and thus inviolable” (p.150). The above statement shows that Jainism does not only teach the path towards self-realization and detachment as the final aim. It allows the possibility, urged by great compassion, to
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