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Jaina View of Life
world becomes a vale of the soul making, and the life a real fight in which something is eternally gained. Life is to be considered as a struggle towards perfection, and not merely an amusing pantomime of infallible marrionettes. We should realise that man is not complete, he is yet to be in what he is, he is small. He is hungering for something which is more than what he can get. In this struggle for perfection man need not depend on God or any superior being for favours, for He "rolls as impotently as you or I”. Man has to depend on his own self-effort. The Jaina attitude is melioristic.
3. The synoptic view is the very foundation of Jaina outlook. A Jaina looks at the soul from the noumenal and the phenomenal points of view. It is simple, perfect, eternal from the noumenal point of view, but not eternal from the empirical point of view. Space is incorporeal and formless; yet divisible, and its divisibility is a spontaneous feature. Reality is complex like a many coloured dome and can be predicated from many points of view. In the analysis of knowledge Jainas admit levels of experience. Sense experience is empirical in nature and content and cannot yield the noumenal reality, although the phenomena can be apprehended by it. Supersensuous experience including omniscience is direct and gives a synoptic picture of noumenal and the phenomenal worlds. Dravya-karma and the Bhāva-karma are two aspects of the after effects of our action. Above all in their analysis of the way of life Jainas have emphasised the synoptic outlook by introducing the gradations of moral codes as muni-dharma and sravaka-dharma. This distinction is unique in Indian thought and it substantially contributes to the understanding of human nature and its capabilities for the attainment of perfection. The analysis in this sense is psychologically important. Jainas have neither denied the reality of empirical world nor have they given exclusive emphasis on this world and our life. I
43. William James : The Will to Believe (1889) p. 61.
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