________________
46
OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
good reasons, as we shall see just now. If we ask: Why has God created the world? the answers to this question are generally very unsatisfactory. For his own glorification? How may we attribute to him so much vanity! For his particular amusement? But he was an eternity without this plaything!-For love of mankind? How may he love a thing before it exists, and how may it be called love, to create millions for misery and eternal pain! The Vedânta has a better answer. The never ceasing new-creation of the world is a moral necessity connected with the central and most valuable doctrine of the exoteric Vedânta, the doctrine of Samsâra.
Man, says Çankara, is like a plant. He grows, flourishes and at the end he dies; but not totally. For as the plant, when dying, leaves behind it the seed, from which, according to its quality, a new plant grows,-so man, when dying, leaves his karma, the good and bad works of his life, which must be rewarded and punished in another life after this. No life can be the first, for it is the fruit of previous actions, nor the last, for its actions must be expiated in a next following life. So the Samsâra is without beginning and without end, and the new creation of the world after every absorption into Brahman is a moral necessity. I need not point out, in India less than anywhere, the high value of this doctrine of Samsâra as a consolation in the afflictions as a moral agent in the temptations of life, - I have to say here only, that the
―――――
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
