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Celebrating Jain Society of Houston Pratishtha Mahotsav 1995
A sutra is a religious text, generally a manual of short aphorisms. The title 'Tattvarthadhigama' is made up of three Sanskrit words tattva, true nature, artha, thing, and adhigama, knowledge. it may then be translated 'a manual for the knowledge of the true nature of things'.
These first four verses, then, sum up the basic fundamentals of Jainism. The remaining thirty-one verses of Chapter 1 discuss the process of cognition, the different types of knowledge, and their acquisition being analyzed and classified in some detail. In other words, the mechanism of right faith and knowledge is discussed (right conduct being deferred to, Chapters VII and IX). After this, the subsequent chapters taken up the seven fundamentals truths in order: these are inn effect the objects of right faith and knowledge.
SOUL, NON-SOUL AND NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE
The most ancient sacred books of the Jains, those which are recognized as the canon, at least by the Svetambara, were compiled in Ardha-Magadhi, a Prakrit or popular spoken language as distinct from the Sanskrit of the scholarly stream among Jain thinkers (Succeeding centuries were to see, of course, a vast output of Jain literature in Sanskrit.) The Tattvartha Sutra is short: it consists of 357 terse aphorisms of a few words each, the whole divided into ten chapters of uneven length. Taken together these chapters present an epitome of Jainism. The ideas are not new, they are to be found in the Agama canonical texts in scattered form, but here they brought together for the first time in a structured system. So short and pithy is the text in some places that it has more the characteristics of an aidememoire easily committed to memory than a full and detailed manual, to be filled out by the commentators whether in writing or orally.
Three chapters, Il to IV, are concerned with the soul, jiva, in all its manifestations. The characteristic which define a soul is upayoga. Thinkers refer to three qualities of the soul, consciousness, and energy. Umasvati here takes the application of consciousness, that is cognition, upayoga, as the defining characteristic. Souls fall into two major categories, those which are still subject to the cycle of birth and death (samsara) and those which have achieved final liberation (moksha). Chapter 11 then continues in detail with an analysis of the different kinds of soul in samsara.
FUNDAMENTALS OF JAINISM AND THE NATURE
OF COGNITION
The first verse of the first chapter expresses the three jewels', ratna traya, of Jainism:
samyag darsana jnane charitrani moksa margah
Chapter III is a short chapter of eighteen verses, describing very tersely the lower and middle portions of the loka, or inhabited universe, and their inhabitants, according to Jain tradition. In the lower portion the seven hells and the beings suffering there.
The middle portion is the abode of humans and animals and consists of a series of concentric continents and oceans. Like Chapter III, Chapter IV is rather cryptic without the aid of a commentary: it lists the four species of gods or heavenly beings who reside in the upper regions of the inhabited universe.
'Right faith, knowledge and conduct are the means to moksha'. 'Right faith' is a rather simplistic translation of samyag darsana, though it is commonly encountered. Right faith, in this context, means rather "the inclination towards validly determining the nature of thing' as Pandit Sukhlalji puts it, or the holding of the truth as true' in Jacobi's words. This right faith originates either spontaneously by nature or through instruction. The seven fundamental truths are listed in verse 4: jiva, soul, and ajiva, non-soul, asvara, inflow of karma to the soul bandha, binding to the soul, samvara, cessation of inflow, nirjara, shedding of accumulated karma. and the goal of the preceding four, moksha or final liberation This list of seven tattva omits two which are added in many other texts, punya and papa, merit and demerit or good and bad results in karma: these may be regarded as subsumed in asrava and bandha.
From a consideration of jiva or soul, the Tattvartha Sutra moves on in Chapter V to discuss aliva, or nonsoul. The categories of non-soul, according to the Jains, are matter (pudgala), space (akasa), time (kala), and the principles of motion and rest (dharma and adharma). The last two are concepts apparently unique to Jain philosophy, There is some dispute as to whether time is to included in the 'substances described as non-soul: the Tattvartha Sutra is ambivalent on this point. In verse I kala is omitted from the list of ajiva substances but its results are mentioned in verse 22, whilst verse 38 states that certain authorities regard it as a 'substance'.
“AU religions teach non-violence; urging us to meet one another with love, not violence"
(Author Unknown)
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