Jainism Eternal and Universal Path for Enlightenment

Author(s): Narendra Bhandari
Publisher: Research Institute of Scientific Secrets from Indian Oriental Scriptures Ahmedabad

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Jainism : The Eternal and Universal path for Enlightenment
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soul, are called vashyak (essentials; Chapter 6). A description of the six routines Samayika, Chaturvinshatistava, Vandanaka, Pratikramana, Kayotsarga, and Pratyakhyana are explained in this gam. The very important Uttar dhyayana søtra containing preachings regarding religious principles and practices, and many stories, dialogues, and examples based on such principles and practices and chulik1 søtras (e.g. Nandi søtra, dealing with various types of jnins) are also main Upangs.
The purpose of mentioning the principal Jain scriptures above is twofold. Firstly they provide the source material on Jainism so that the readers who are interested in original texts can refer to them. Secondly and more importantly, we want to emphasise that the texts are only "compilations" by knowledgeable saints and scholars. They were documented many centuries after Bhagvin Mah?vir and although they contain answers given by the Enlightened Arihants, they have been recalled from the memorized versions. For this reason, they need not be taken as accurately verbatim because of various limitations in memorizing due to passage of time, evolving interpretation over ages and the influence of other cotemporary thought. The rigidity with which one should take them as the word of the Lord" should therefore be critically borne in mind.
Science is objective in the sense that it examines and analyses various objects in the universe and is independent of the observer. On the other hand, religion is subjective. It is concerned with the self. Thus science is experimental and religion is experiential. The questions is: Is there another way, other than the scientific approach to arrive at the truth? Can meditation lead to the same end results as the modern scientific tools? And can both of them, science and meditation, be integrated into one holistic methodology? For this purpose, one has to debate issues which have common ground in science and religion.
This book is not intended to be an exposition of the gams; rather it attempts to bring out their main aspects in a simplistic and easily understandable way, trying to find some common ground between Jainism and modern science. One should also bear in mind that the original preachings of Mah?vir were in Ardh-M gadhi or Prikrit, a language long forgotten by the masses and replaced first by Sanskrit and later by Hindi and other regional languages. It is customary to stick to the original texts for sake of purity but although the concepts and cardinal points may be the same, the language has changed over the many millennia and it is extremely difficult to comprehend the original texts, even by the learned scholars since it often includes an element of interpretation. It is difficult to ascertain the veracity of all the texts but, on comparing them with