Book Title: Jaina Philosophy
Author(s): Virchand R Gandhi, Kumarpal Desai
Publisher: World Jain Confederation

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Page 161
________________ The Jaina Philosophy But the doctrine of re-incarnation assists us most when we look at inequality and injustice and evil of the world and seek for solution. "Why is one man born rich and the other poor? Why is one man born in Central Africa among the cannibals and the other in the peaceful part of India? Why is Queen Victoria born to rule over territories on which the Sun never sets and why is a labourer of Burma born in Burma to work as a slave in an Englishman's tea-garden. What is the cause of this apparent injustice? Even those who believe in the personal creator of the universe must believe in this doctrine of re-incarnation in order to exonerate God from the charge of maliciousness. And now let us see if the Bible of Christendom assists in upholding this doctrine. In the proverbs of Solomon we find this passage – (Proverbs VIII. 22-31). Here all the passages except the last two proves the pre-existence of soul, and not the creation at a certain time. The last two passages even prove a prior physical life. Let us turn to Jeremiah 1 5. "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb / sanctified thee. This shows that the prophets too had existed before. Even in the New Testament there is sufficient evidence for reincarnation. In John IX 2 a question is put to Jesus by his disciples – which did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind? This refers to two popular theories of the time - one that of Moses who taught that the sins of fathers would descend on the children to the third and the fourth generation and other that of reincarnation doctrine. He merely says that neither that man's sin nor; his father's sin was the cause of his blindness; he does not deny the free-existence of that man. For in Galatians Ch. VI 7 we find for whatever a man soweth that shall be also the reap. Paul does not here mean that what a man soweth in this physical existence that he shall reap in spiritual existence. For in the next passage he says :- For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the - 152 . Jain Education International For Personal & Private Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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