Jain Journal 1990 04

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

Page 65

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JAIN JOURNAL
nature of the universe you will study the nature of all the different parts of the universe and then the laws will be applicable to all parts of it. We think that we are superior to other beings because our tenants who live on the ground floor are inferior to us, but we have no right therefore to crush those tenants, who later on will acquire the right to inhabit the second and third floors and finally the highest floor. One living on the highest plane has no right to crush those who live on the lowest plane. If one thinks that he has a right to do this, that he has not sufficient strength to live without destroying life, our philosophy says that it is still sin to destroy life, and it remains only to choose the lowest form, the
vil. We will in business take such a kind of business as will yield the most profit and will cause us to lose the least, in which we have the less liabilities, and the highest condition will be that in which we have no liabilities and no creditors, the state in which we may live without any creditors or in a perfectly free condition. That is the liberated condition.
5. The idea of Karma is very complicated. I have told you something of it in my former lectures. The one chief point is that that theory is not the theory of fatalism, not a theory in which the human being is tied down to some one, bound down by the force of something outside itself. In one sense only will there be fatalism ; if we are free to do many things, we are also not free to do other things, and we cannot be freed from the results of our acts. Some results may be manifested in great strength, others very weakly ; some may take a very long time and others a very short time ; some are of such nature that they take a long time to work out, while the influence of others may be removed by simply washing with water and that will be the case in the matter of acts done incidentally without any settled purpose or any fixed desire. In such a case with reference to many acts we may counteract their effects by willing to do so. So the theory of Karma is not in any sense a theory of fatalism, but we say that all of us are not going to one goal without any desire on our part, not that we are to reach that state without any effort on our part, but that our present condition is the effect of our acts, thoughts and words in the past state. 12 To say that all will reach the perfect state merely because someone has died that they might be saved, merely from a belief in this person, would be a theory of fatalism because those who have lived a pure and virtuous state and have not accepted a certain theory will not reach the perfected state simply for that reason and no other The faith in Saviours is simply this, that by following out the divine
19 This sentence will give a clearer meaning if "we say that all of us are not going"
is read as "we do not say that all of us are going.”