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176
JAINISM AND KARNATAKA CULTURE
"f
remarked, would be a digression too long for our purposes. What Dr. Thomas has said about Buddhism is perhaps more true in the case of Jainism: Buddhism has been called pessimistic," says he, "but it is so only in the sense in which all religions are pessimistic that inculcate asceticism, and place true happiness above the pleasures of the sense."174
The following observations on Christian monasticism are illuminating :
Co
66 The basic idea of monasticism in all its varieties," observes the Catholic Encyclopaedia, is seclusion or withdrawal from the world or society. The object of this is to achieve a life whose ideal is different from and largely at variance with that pursued by the majority of mankind; and the method adopted, no matter what its precise details may be, is always self-abnegation or organised asceticism. Taken in this broad sense monachism may be found in every religious system which has attained to a high degree of ethical development, such as the Brahman, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian and Moslem religions, and even in the system of those modern communistic societies, often antitheological in theory, which are a special feature of recent social development especially in America. Hence, it is claimed that a form of life which flourishes in environments so diverse must be the expression of a principle inherent in human nature and rooted therein no less deeply than the principle of domesticity, though obviously limited to a far smaller portion of mankind... The truth is that the Christian ideal is frankly an ascetic one and monachism is simply the endeavour to effect a material realisation of that ideal.... Two ideas that constantly recur in Eastern theology are that the monastic state is that of Christian perfection and also a state of penance."175
"Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world, " sayeth the Gospel. "If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is con
174 Cf. Thomas, The Life of Buddha,p. 178 n. 175 The Catholic Encyclopaedia X, pp. 459-68.
