________________
JAINA CONCEPT OF GOD IN JAINA THEISM
179
dies being burnt by fire, or being drowned in water or being cut up by a sword or killed by a cannon ball or bullet or being destroyed by the fall of a building or a rock or is turned a starving wretch.
In various such ways, he undergoes the punishment for his evil deeds. In such a case, there is no need of the intervention of God. It is only the cause that fructifies in these evil effects and the cause is the man himself who performs the deed. Similarly there are various ways in which man undergoes punishment in hell or attains reward in heaven. If you ask what cause will lead to punishment in a case of fornication, I cannot answer. But I can say so much that there are certainly causes, which bring reward or punishment for good or evil actions. What fruit will a man attain and how and when and where, only the blessed Arhat, God of Jains, can say. Without a cause, none can attain the consequences of his acts. It is, therefore, superfluous to bring in God for dispensation of these fruits. Can a sensible man say that a man fit enough to cook his food but unfit to eat it? Suppose a man is slain by a sword by another man. How was it that the slain man got his suffering and pain? Who was it that led to this suffering? If you say that it was God who drove the slayer to slay the man, then why is the slayer liable to be hanged?
Is this the law of God? He (God) first prompted the slayer to slay a man and punished him with gallows. Your statement renders God extremely unjust. If you say that the slayer slew the man himself without any prompting from God, then it is proved that man attains reward or punishment by reason of his own acts and that no intervention of God is required as only the puny-witted men imagine. O believer in God, I ask you another question. If it is God, who, for good deeds, gives one the reward of enjoyment of sexual pleasures in the company of youth-inebriated celestial nymphs, does He at the same time punish others for misdeeds by throwing them into the fire of hell and subjecting them to various excruciating mortifications?
Jain Education International
For Personal & Private Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
