Jain Moral Doctrine

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

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JAIN MORAL DOCTRINE
tain that man alone is the Creator of his own destiny and dispense with the hypothesis of the world-Creator.
Amidst the variednesses of religions, it is certainly difficult to pick out the fundamental features which can be found in all religions. The conception of some sort of God as a being superior to the finite beings is of course the central doctrine in all forms of religion but differences crop up when we look to the positive contents of this idea of God. We have seen how world-creation has not been attributed to God by some religions. Upon a careful survey of all the most basic doctrines, connected with the theories of God, it appears that all religions, of whatever age and in whatever stage of development they may be, agree in attributing 'Power to their god or gods. Even in totemism, a 'totem' is held sacred because it is supposed to have the 'power' of protecting the worshipper from evil or of curing his disease, because, in other words, beneficial influences are believed to be exercised upon the worshipper by the totem, while it is held to punish the disregard of its sacredness. Similarly, in fetichism, the 'fetich' e.g. a stick or a piece of stone is venerated because a peculiar 'potency' is attributed to it by reason of some peculiarity in its structure or of its being in-formed by a powerful spirit or of its being a sign or a representation of a transcending deity. God is thus in all religions essentially a powerful being. Another fundamental characteristic of the God in all religions is that he has the immediate apprehension of all things. A third similar divine feature is the 'omniscience' of God i.e. the fact of his truly knowing all things and phenomena. The last attribute that is ascribed to God in every religion is that he is essentially a being in ‘uninterrupted joy.' So, these four,-infinite power, infinite apprehension, infinite knowledge and infinite joy-are the features, attributed to God in every religion.
The finding that an idea of God with the above-mentioned four attributes is immanent in all forms of religion leads one to make a guess about the fundamental of a universal religion-a religion acceptable to all the religious-minded people. It is that the God of the universal religion is the God of supreme power, of infinite apprehension, of omniscience and of unobstructed joy. It is to be noted, however, that while the belief in such a God is traceable in all religions, it would be wrong to hold that this belief is fully rationalised and perfected in all of them, so far as its object is concerned. It may be that people of all ages have an instinctive belief in some form of divinity with its four aspects, as indicated above but this intuition must be held to be in the process of continuous rationali
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