________________
248
THE JAINA GAZETTE
all things, the loneliness of the soul, the changeability of happiness and pain, etc.,) and he has to submit to the 22 Hardships (as Hunger, Thirst, Cold, Heat, Insect-bite, Begging his food, etc.)
By leading a life within the strict limits of all these prescriptions, the chief principles of which are Non-injury and Selfrestriction, a state can be reached, when all the Ghati-Karmas, i.e. the detrimental Karmas, are exhausted. Then, the original qualities of the Soul shine forth undisturbed, omniscience arises, and after the remaining neutral Karmas (the Aghati-Karmas) have likewise been consumed, the ascetic gives up his body for the last time, and enters Salvation. The Soul, free from all earthly weight, rises straight upward to Siddasila, where all the Siddhas stay bodiless, but still individually distinguished from one another, in eternal happiness and in omniscience, taking no more part in any earthly concerns whatsoever.
Some of the Kevalis or Omniscient Ones become, before entering Salvation, Arhats or Tirthankaras i.e. the Renewers of the Jain Doctrine, who start a new Tirtha, i.e. community, and become the instrument of the enlightenment and Salvation of numerous people. The worship of these Jinas and their idols, as it is still practised to-day, is far from being "idol-worship" in its idea, but it has, with much better right, been called "ideal-worship" for the worshipper expects from his "God" neither help nor favour, but he plays the pious play merely in order to concentrate his mind and activity on his actual ideal and standard, and to find, as it to were, some substantial support for his striving after the far-off aim of perfection.
Jain monkhood is, of course, an ethical ideal high above the dispositions and faculties of body and mind of average man. Still, average man need not fear to be shut out from stirving after the highest aim. Jainism welcomes every earnest longing for Salvation, finds a place for it in its gradation of ethical attitudes, the Guna-Sthanas, which range from a completely animal conception of life to the Perfection of the Kevali, and allows it to find expression in the adoption of one or other of the ethical standards for laymen. Thus, e.g. for monks, the practising of Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
