Parmatma Prakash

Author(s): Yogindra Acharya
Publisher: Central Jaina Publishing House

Page 14

INTRODUCTION.
" Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.!!- John, VIII. 32.
Belief of the right sort is the next requisite of moksha, and conscious exertion in the right direction is the last accessory to Nirvana. These three, 2.e., Right Knowledge, Right Belief or Faith, and Right Conduct, taken together, are called the Ratana Triya (the three jewels) in Jainism. Whoever establishes himself in the contemplation of his real natural attributes, consisting in perfect knowledge, perfect faith, perfect conduct and infinite happiness, at once becomes the Parmatman, the object of worship and adoration in the three worlds.
The next point which demands our attention is the significance of virtue and vice iu reference to the ideal of Nirvana. The author of the Parmatman Prakasha makes it perfectly clear that virtue is as much a cause of bondage as vice, though the types of them differ from one another as much as a golden chain does from an iron one. Self-contemplation, aud not the performance of good or bad deeds, is the immediate cause of Nirvana, and it is the Nirvana alone which the ardent ascetic iongs for and tries to actualise for himself. It would be faulty logic to imagine that the non-performance of good or virtuous deeds should imply immorality; as a matter of fact, virtue and vice do not exhaust the types of actions, which, agreeably to the classification made by Chuang Tzu, the Mystic Saint of China, should be divided into moral, immoral and non-moral. The word non-moral, however, does not convey a true idea of the third type at all; on the contrary, it is liable, from its very etymology, to mislead us about its true significance. I propose to call this third class of actions the transcendental, or divine, because they emanate from the siddhatamans (perfected souls), and also because by their performance men rise up to the top of the world as Gods. Thus, of the three kinds of actions performed by men and other beings, the good oues lead to heaven, the bad ones to hell, but those of the transcendental type carry one to the Rock of Perfection and Bliss, i.e., Nirvana.
This brings us down to a consideration of the notion of multiplicity of Gods which the idea of Nirvana directly gives rise to. The modern