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"Samyagdarśana is the prime cause of salvation, just as the foundation is the mainstay of a palace, good luck that of beauty, life that of bodily enjoyment, royal power that of victory, a culture that of nobility and policy that of government."50 Rightness in knowledge and conduct is acquired through, samyagdarśana or spiritual awakening. The spiritually awakened self considers his, own self as his genuine abode and regards. the outward dwelling places as artificial.51 He renounces all identification with the animate and inanimate objects of the world, and propeily weighs them, in the balance of his awakened spirit. Thus he develops a unique attitude towards himself and the world, around him.
The religious treatises of the Jainas discuss the nature of samyagdarśana from two points of view, namely, niscaya (transcendental) and vyavahāra (empirical). The former regards samyagdarśana as awakening of the transcendental self, whereas the latter regards, it as the belief in the seven tattvas.S2 Even in the belief in the seven tattvas, the central principle is the self. So ultimately vyavahāra-samyagdarśana will give rise to niscayasamyagdarśana. Amệtacandra accords to niscaya-naya or śuddhanaya the status of samyagdarśana. 53 This is due to the fact that śuddha-naya consists in recognizing the self as untouched by karmas, as undifferentiated, and as perdurable, 54 and this experience is not other than spiritual awakening or samyagdarśana, thus niscaya and vyavahāra-samyagdarśana are not opposed to each other, but the latter may be regarded as the means to niscaya-samyagdarśana. In other words, vyavahārasamyagdarśana is fruitful only when it gives rise to niścayasamyagdaršana. ...
There may be a tendency to confuse spiritual awakening with moral and intellectual accomplishments. One may say that he who is intellectually enlightened and morally converted is spiritually awakened. How can a man after attaining to the fair height of intellectual knowledge and moral upliftment be spiritually barren? Though it is astonishing, yet it is regarded as a fact by the Jainas. The 'dravya-lingi-muni' is an instance of
Jaina Mysticism and other essays
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