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JAINISM: A THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY "GOD IN JAINISM”
This word Tīrthankara is very often used, meaning a divine sage who makes a bridge or ford (tīrtha) to cross over the ocean of pain, suffering, misery and transmigratory existence.78
The capacity to reveal and effectively preach the truth, however, does not belong to all the enlightened and omniscient souls. It is only those rare souls, who have acquired the potency of revealing the truth and establishing a religious community (tīrthakrtittva) by their moral and virtuous activities of the past life, that are capable of revealing the truth and preaching it to the world at large on their attainment of omniscience (kevala-jñāna). Such soul becomes the Tīrthankara, founder of religion. This is the Jaina conception of Godhood. God, according to the Jainas, is the symbol of all that is good and great, moral and virtuous. But he is not the creator or the preserver or the destroyer of the world. He is not in any sense responsible for the destiny of the universe or the individual. Nor is he himself eternally free, but has worked out his own freedom exactly in the same way as the others do. The difference between the ordinary omniscient and Tīrthankara is that the latter can reveal and preach the truth and form a religious community while the former cannot.
This is the conception of God in Jainism without having any personal God. But Tīrthankara cannot shape destiny of Man; neither bestow mercy upon suffering soul. Tīrthankaras are supposed to be twenty-four in each ascending and descending eon of one time cycle.
4. Siddha
Attainment of this stage is possible, only after complete annihilation of both destructive and non-destructive karmas. As total karmas are exhausted, the soul attains dis-embodied liberation." It
78 Uttarādhyayana-sūtra, XXII, 26, 27 and P-183
(i) Krtşnakarmakşayomokşaṁ, Tavārthādhigama-sūtra, X.3 (ii) Uttarādhyayana-sūtra; XXXVI - 66
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