Jain Journal 1980 04

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

Page 16

128
"The heart has its reasons which reason cannot define." Even Buddha lingered at the door of his home through the night of his departure hovering and deciding his final course.
JAIN JOURNAL
When we analyze this need and trace it to its source, a question comes, "Is it rooted in our cells, a function of our bodily condition like the need for food, water, air? How deep does it really go ? Is it part of our flesh ?" We can say that creatures have been known to live without it, unlike the other bodily demands mentioned, and yet it is closely linked to our emotions and the emotions are tied in with our cells, glands and hormones.
If we say this desire is "non-essential" to life itself, then how do we view it? Is it to be regarded as a comfort, important to life but ultimately dispensable, like shelter and clothing? Or should we say it is like those higher goals of truth, beauty, justice? Is it an aesthetic value that becomes more and more refined as man develops ?
Mahavira taught that all life shares four basic drives in common-the drive for survival and protection of the body, for food, sleep and sex. The sexual impulse can be viewed as an expression of a need to realize wholeness, to fulfil and complete oneself through relationship. When this desire is sublimated, it seeks to reach out and touch through the arts-poetry, drama, painting, sculpture. Sometimes we think this is the experience of special people we call "artists", but who is an artist ? Is he not simply the one who feeels this longing to communicate more intensely, the one who focusses his attention more exclusively on that aim? His life takes on meaning because of his art, and that sets him apart from other men, but the same drive is found in all of us in varying degrees of intensity.
If we accept that this predicament is an inherent part of human existence, then perhaps we have been taking the wrong approach in looking at it as a barrier or obstacle. Maybe, we are asking the wrong question. Instead, let us ask what part the art of communication can play in our progress toward mokşa, in freeing ourselves from the bondage of painful attachment.
The idea of communication is central to the Jaina theory of knowledge and the importance of knowledge in the soul's advancement and evolution. The most rudimentary form of knowledge is mati jñāna— knowledge acquired through the senses and mind, through direct and interaction between the gross, physical body and the environment. The next stage is śruta jñāna, knowledge acquired by inference, from