Jain Moral Doctrine

Author(s): Harisatya Bhattacharya
Publisher: Jain Sahitya Vikas Mandal

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CHAPTER I
BASIC PRINCIPLES OF RELIGION AND MORALITY
Subjectively speaking, religion is a consciousness, establishing the closest possible relationship between a man and a being, transcending that man's ordinary empirical self. Religious beliefs and practices are due to the various attempts to establish that relationship. Although this general statement may be made about all the religions, current or past, in their positive and concrete forms, they have differed from each other more or less widely. Some religions are polytheistic, believing in a number of gods; some, henotheistic, in which one of the gods is given the supreme position while the others are more or less subordinated to him; Zoroastrianism, in some of its aspects, seems to posit two contending deities; while monotheism admits only one God. As regards the question of God's creating the universe, the religions do not seem to have been unanimous. Some maintained that God created the universe out of nothing, some held that matter in its ultimacy was independent of God and was only shaped and moulded in definite forms by the Creator; others contended that not only matter but time, space and an infinite number of souls had had independent realities of their own and that the Creator's business was only to build up bodies and environments or requisite circumstances for those psychical beings. It is, however, manifest that creation involves an internal urge in the Creator and as such, implies some sort of imperfection in him. Accordingly, it is only a finite being that can be a Creator in any sense, so that if God be conceived as the supreme being with infinite perfection, he cannot be supposed to be the Creator of the universe. As a matter of fact, some of the rational religions main