Jain Moral Doctrine

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

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JAIN MORAL DOCTRINE
faith, one should not consider that it is really based on some previous mode of correct knowledge. The Karma which, according to the Jainas, suppresses true faith and the subsidence of which causes the evolution of it, is different from the Karma which obstructs the rise of true knowledge. Accordingly, there is a fundamental difference between faith and knowledge. A man of faith is not always a wise man nor is a learned person necessarily a man of correct beliefs. The fact that Samyaktva presupposes the Labdhis or attainments described before, does not show that it is not an immediate form of apprehension. Nor does the description (e.g., by Samantabhadra) of Samyak-darśana as ('Deva-guru-Sastra-Śraddhāna') a belief in the true god, teacher and scripture points in any way to true faith being other than a form of immediate consciousness. It is true that the teachings of the true master and studies of the true scripture are said to generate true faith; but this also does not show that Samyaktva is anything other than a form of immediate consciousness. We shall see hereafter how from the 'real' view of the Samyaktva, it is nothing but 'Svānubhūti' or self-consciousness itself. Here we are concerned with showing that the belief in the seven kinds of reals which has been called the Samyak-darśana is also an immediate form of consciousness. Even the fact of the Samyaktva arising from 'Adhigama' or phenomena, to some extent external to the believer does not detract from the character of immediacy. The outside factors are only conditions of the evolution of faith, not its productive cause. The faith arises from within the nature of the self, from which the Karma has fallen off. Samyaktva is thus an immediate form of consciousness, just like self-consciousness itelf. Teachings have been said to generate true faith; but the true faith does not arise so long as the matters of the teachings are not identified with the hearers' self. It is only where and when the essence of the teachings is felt to be incorporated in the very being of the hearer that he feels the right faith; right faith thus really rises from the self of the hearer and not exactly from outside teachings; this explains cases where teachings fail to evoke any response from the hearer in the form of a correct faith. The grounds of faith are in the self, not in any external phenomena and faith is an immediate form of consciousness, those external phenomena being only conditions of its evolution.
That the right faith is an immediate form of consciousness not intercepted by nor interfered with by any other consideration or form of cognition is also clear from the Jainas' description of it as consisting in pure Jñana-çetanā. The Çetana or consciousness of a being, according to them, is of three modes. In Karma-çētana, the
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