Book Title: Jainism
Author(s): Herbert Warren
Publisher: Divine Knowledge Society

View full book text
Previous | Next

Page 65
________________ JAINISM 55 With regard to this right attitude and its opposite, the wrong attitude of thought towards the universe, it may be useful here to anticipate the question why is the one right and the other wrong? The answer is only repeating that. those Masters who have developed all the potential qualities of the soul, have discovered and taught their discoveries that in man soul and matter are in combination; that it is not necessary to be in combination with matter in order to live; not only unnecessary, but that by the combination the natural qualities of the soul are choked up. When in this combination the soul predominates over the matter, then some of the soul's natural qualities, love, kindness, right convictions, etc., manifest themselves in a degree. And this state where the soul as it were overbalances the foreign forces in us, is what has been called the right attitude as opposed to the state where the matter overbalances the soul and chokes it up so much, which state has been called the wrong attitude or state of delusion, wrong belief, etc. SOILINGS OF THE RIGHT ATTITUDE When a person is convinced as above regarding the Deity, the Teacher, and the Rule, he takes care or takes a vow not to fall into any of the following five transgressions or waverings from such convictions:--- (1) Doubt.--You may doubt the truth of some of the statements of the philosophy; but this doubt is that which comes after having once been convinced of the truth of the statement (shanka). (2) A state of mind in which it is argued that because a person can do wonderful things, such as cause a wali Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

Loading...

Page Navigation
1 ... 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135