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Spiritual Disciplines and Practices
in Jainism
BHAGCHANDRA JAIN
Spirituality is the science of spirit or self or ultimate reality in being which comprises its right knowledge and right conduct in its relation with the universe. It is beyond the physical or material world and therefore is immanent. It is called adhyātma (pertaining to self) in Sanskrit. Spiritual knowledge of the self requires its realization that one has capacity and aspiration to attain the highest and ultimate truth. Spirituality needs spirit in its purity which can be achieved only by and in inwardness, intuition and mysticism. Ultimate reality is related to world until one reaches ultimate spiritual destiny. Therefore there is significant relationship between human and pure spiritual and natural and super-natural.
An empirical man is expected to follow the auspicious qualities or values and ethics and morality which are intimately related to the ultimate. Ethics is man's intellectual search for conceptual knowledge about the good and morality is essentially merely a mode of personal and social conduct. Both these together help a man to reach ultimate reality.
Spirituality, religion and philosophy are intimately connected with each other. The word 'religion' is derived from the Latin Verb ‘religare' i.e. to bind which means religion is to impose duties that bind and require observances on the part of its adherents. It has a wide sphere for the spiritual upliftment of the self and society. Its fundamental subject is to search ultimate truth with intuition but simultaneously it can also be a social, dynamic and a subject for intellectualistic enterprise involving metaphysical and philosophical presuppositions. It is first subjective and then objective. When religion is considered for the sake of spiritual realization it becomes a basic instrument for the welfare of mankind and its society. Philosophy is essentially an intellectual pursuit which provides a man with a new sphere to ponder over religious and social problems with certain moral values and spiritual qualities. Religion is for self-valuation and philosophy stipulates the logical speculation. Specially in Indian philosophy knowledge is an
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