Jain Journal 1968 04

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 86

THE YOGASASTRA OF
HEMACANDRA
NATHMAL TATIA
The Indian systems of philosophy are not mere speculations on the nature of things but, with all sincerity and earnestness at their command, they dive deep into the mysteries of the universe in order to find the way out of the limitations of the worldly existence vitiated by perversities and crippled by various privations and disabilities The perfect unfolding of the potentialities of the self is the object aimed at The pursuit of truth must culminate in the realisation of truth The ordinary sources of knowledge are found to be inadequate for the discovery of the ultimate truth, being subject to the limitations imposed by the senses The intellect, though possessed of a superior status in that it organises the data of experience into a system, is also not immune from the limitations of the senses and has been found to record varying and conflicting conceptions which cannot all be true For this we must fall back upon another organ and this organ is meditation free from the visitations of the extraneous influences Self-meditation is common to all, and is a process of supreme importance to all the Indian systems Meditation on the nature of self is the only means of realising the truth One cannot grasp the truth unless one meditates upon it, and one cannot realise it unless one grasps it Implicit faith in the truth, whether born with the help of the preceptor or fostered by a spontaneous intuition of the truth, is the starting point on the path of spiritual realisation There are various processes of leading oneself from this stage of implicit faith in the truth to the stage of final realisation of the truth The processes have a common term for them, and that term is yoga Let us now study the essential characteristics of the Jaina conception of the pathway to emancipation, in other words, the Jaina yoga!
1 The term yoga has a chequered history "The word yoga occurs in the earliest sacred literature of the Hindus in the Rigveda (about 3000 BC) with the meaning of effecting a connection Later on, in about 700 or 800 BC the same word is used in the sense of yoking a horse In still later literature (abo.at 500 or 600 BC) it is found with the meaning of controlling the senses, and the senses themselves are compared with uncontrolled spirited horses The word probably represents a very old Original of the Aryan stock, which can be traced also in the German joch, OE geoc, Latin jugum, Greek zugon' Dasgupta, Philosophical Essays, Calcutta University, 1941, p 179 'In Panini's time the word yoga had attained its technical meaning, and he distinguised the root yuj samadhan (yw in the sense of concentration) from yujur yoge (yujir in the sense of connecting)' Dasgupta, History of Indian Philosophy, Vol I, P. 226 It is, so far as my
perted horses he senses, and the
bir says, Calcutech OE Reoc, "Latinal of the Aryan