Jainism

Author(s): Herbert Warren
Publisher: Divine Knowledge Society

Page 72

JAINISM
the means whereby we begin to stop the inflow of the worst foreign energies, and to work out those that we have already generated in the past and which are in us at present. It is the means whereby we get ourselves from the first stage of development to the fourth. The second and third stages are of but momentary duration.
These rules are all based upon love, sympathy, fellowfeeling, pity, etc., and the practice of them is to be accompanied by these feelings, otherwise it is mere hypocrisy.
These rules are the ideas, convictions, and conduct of those who practise them. These rules are not commands. The Jain Deity issues no commands. These rules are an aspect of the man who practises them; they are not sonething separate from the man; they are the man's state of knowledge and mode of behaviour.
And the man's practice of these rules has an internal and external aspect. The inward state ought to correspond with the external, visible conduct. The description which a man makes, either for himself or to other people, of his rules or principles, would be the external aspect of the rules; it is like a peg on which, on account of weakness, the thoughts must be hung. The rules must be practised in each of these two aspects, otherwise the end to which they are the means will not be reached. The external, visible conduct must become the cause of the internal state of love, pity, etc. From the sincere practice
of these external principles or rules of conduct, comes oui