________________
moral life is only a search for a natural life in the midst of unnatural modalities The very unnaturalness of empirical life where the soul finds itself acting under the influence of matter is an assurance that the soul should be able to shed evil, ultimately move from an imperfect will to its innate perfection
It has been held that freedom, immortality and God represent three necessary presuppositions of morality Freedom and immortality are obviously well preserved in Jainism God, however, is rejected, His place being taken up, partly by Karma and partly by the perfected soul in the state of omniscience and functioning as a moral teacher The theory of Karma postulates a sufficient causal connection between present good and evil actions and their distant consequences in terms of happiness and unhappiness This connection in the absence of an all powerful divine agency remains mysterious to the understanding of the two functions of God for the moral life, viz ensuring a just order where men get their deserts and presenting a realized moral ideal of perfection, while the first function is thus reserved for 'Karma' in Jaina theory, the second is performed by the soul itself in its ideal or perfect state, exemplified objectively in the lives of the saints The normal danger of the acceptance of God in theistic religion is that it slackens the moral will and effort on account of the sense of sin or diffidence or the desire to rely on God and place one's burden on Him This danger is altogether avoided by Jainism which makes a clarion call for total self-reliance "You are your own friend Why do you seek a friend from outside ?"
In this sense, in its activising emphasis on self-reliance and its synthetic and relativistic dialectics, the Jaina tradition has obvious relevance to the contemporary situation The ethical perspective of our own times has been fashioned by the forces of humanism and secularism, individualism and democracy, and emphasis on changing socio-historic conditions The moral consciousness of the modern man seeks to determine right and wrong within the web of conflicting social duties and loyalties as presented by his historical situation This point of view is at once egoistic and Socio-centric, sensebound and historical, rational and calculating
