Jainism and World Problems

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

Page 87

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It is the knowledge that enables one to attain to these Great Ideals that is termed Right Knowledge.
In Europe no one has ever acquired this knowledge, and men who have upheld the existence of soul, have not understood anything further about its nature. Not one of the western philosophers has had his attention directed to the point whether Omniscience and Bliss appertained to the nature of the soul, and could be brought into realization by the removal of the causes that hindered their functioning.
The reason for the inability to attain to the right kind of knowledge lay, in each and every instance, in the lack of the labdhis, as already stated. These labdhis are 5 in number, and may be described as follows :
THE FIVE LABDHIS
2
1 loosening of powerful karmas that keep the mind deluded the fanatic's delusions stand in the way of his turning to the true light;
special clarity of the intellect which is tantamount to the acquisittion of the scientific turn of mind, that will not be satisfied with what is irrational, and that shuns superstition;
3
1
the search for an opportunity to gain and the gaining of the true information about the nature of things; a still further subsiding of the forces of deluding karmas-passions and delusions* and emotional excitability (prejudice, pride) which turn the thought into wrong channels; and
5 actual thinking out of the problem of Life.
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It will be seen that a fanatic will simply not let any one propound the true doctrine, and will never be induced to ascertain whether the views he himself holds be correct or otherwise. He is in the grip of powerful deluding karmas!
*Delusions consist in wrong beliefs, e.g., taking the body to be the man holding it to have been created by a maker, and the like.