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Some Points in Jain Teachings Count Arnold Keyserling
The first clue to the message of Jainism is given in its name derived from jina which means 'a conqueror.' The Jain wants to conquer his own personal life, whatever it might be. He venerates only the people who, as he knows, have achieved the goal. He therefore follows the Tirthankaras as his guides. If he attains the goal, it will mean that his personal essence or soul has reached immortality.
The Jain starts from the premise that there exists a great number of individual beings, that all these beings could one day achieve immortality, and thus the right attitude for the Jain is to strive to attain his personal fulfilment, and also, at the same time, to help others to achieve their individual fulfilment. This is the metaphysical kernel of the teaching of Mahavira. Salvation lies not only in attaining a state, or in following a moral precept, but in developing the individual being whoever and whatever he might be to its utmost fulfilment. Only in achieving this fulfilment, man will serve as a link between striving nature and perfected beings.
From this emerges clearly the purpose of human existence. Man has an inner essence, a "soul." The right attitude towards this soul is given in the doctrine of Ahimsa it is wrong to hinder the development of this soul So Ahimsa means not only something negative-as refraining from killing and doing injury- but also something positive: it means to take the existing being, whatever and however it might be, as the starting point. Souls have certain characteristics, certain possibilities. Owing to individual achievement and Karma, each soul has a definite personal way. And it is this personal way which should be accepted as the basis of human society.
But not only the human being has a soul in this sense; every animate being even every existing phenomenon of nature has as its ultimate cause a divine spark, which one day may also develop and pass through the human form to attain its individual immortality. Thus Man stands not against nature--he is the real pontifex maximus linking, in his striving, the earth with the heaven, if he achieves the goal.
Why did Mahavira and many of the earlier Tirthankars start and continue their life and teachings as ascetics? Because Man tends to confuse the means with the ends Man is perishable on earth. If he identifies himself with his earthly possessions, he will lose himself. Thus the discipline of asceticism is a method and a means, it is not an end. It serves to liberate the human essence from its attachment to animal impulses and instincts.
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