Jain Moral Doctrine

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

Page 83

CHAPTER VII
THE JAINA CARITRA AS THE BASIS OF AN
UNIVERSAL RELIGION AND MORALITY
In the foregoing pages, we have given an account of acts which are regarded as moral by the Jainas. They are moral in as much as they are believed to stop the further inflow of non-psychical forces in the soul and destroy those which are already accumulated there. It may appear to many, however, that the Jaina account of the moral acts is after all but a list of acts, most of which are acknowledged to be good and commendable by all people. Is there, then, any distinctive feature in the Jaina ethics?
The moral acts enjoined in the Jaina ethics being similar to those of the other systems, any distinction which the former can claim for it, must be in the ideal which it puts before it and in the manner in which this ideal may be held to explain and interpret the particular acts of morality.
As regards the aim and purpose underlying the moral acts, the different theories may be classified under two broad groups which may be described as 'other-pointing' and 'self-pointing'. Under the first class come firstly, those theories which maintain that a prescribed act is moral because it is so laid down by God or the gods and
condly, those that hold the morality of an act to be judged by its conduciveness to the welfare of the state, the community or the mankind in general.
It must be admitted that when an act is described as a commandment from a superior being, it is invested with a sacredness which is generally accepted as unquestionable. The practice of such