Introduction to Jainism

Author(s): Rudi Jansma, Sneh Rani Jain
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

Page 75

AHIMSA
73
thought systems, such as the Buddhist. So isolated perceptions are in themselves axiomatically wrong.
If a truth can not be refuted, it may be merely because it lacks the criteria for falsification as defined by Popper. If a theory or view can not be falsified now, it may still be falsified in the future. If it has the power to destroy all false ideas up to now, will it always have this power? We could only come to a final conclusion at the end of the future - and the end of the future will never occur according to Jainism. What if the ideas we regard as most fundamental or even axiomatic themselves appear to change, or to be a limited aspect of a still deeper truth? Modern scientific findings often seem to falsify the Jain or other religious teachings (e.g. in the Jain cosmography the earth is described as flat). But this falsification has limited value, because we do not know the intention and the full depth of cosmography: is it a scheme for esoteric teaching, not to be taken as a straightforward description of material truth? Was the designer of cosmography merely a dreamer or a fantastic visionary, or was he someone who really knew and designed the best possible picture to convey truth, to help us in our meditation, but engraving essential truths in our being, bringing us closer to our real being and the being of the universe in a step by step effort to guide humankind in its evolution?
The most interesting of the above criteria is the fifth: saying that truth promotes beings of all types morally and does good to them. This is an axiomatic statement: it implies that the true and the good (i.e. doing good to beings) are inseparable - as in Plato. Though this criterion is metaphysical and improvable from a western point of view, it is the one to make us the happiest. It gives a heart to Truth, as it were. How important this is for the world: the truth is not a thing to fear, to avoid, but gives humanity hope and happiness!
It seems that none of the above criteria alone or together can bring us to omniscience and salvation. They can sharpen our mind against mistakes and thus protect us. They