Religion and Philosophy of the Jainas

Author(s): Virchand R Gandhi
Publisher: Jain International Ahmedabad

Page 65

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE JAINAS
properties being hereupon called sankhya. They, however, thought it would be impossible to postulate matter without mind and they therefore laid down an eternal union between puruşa or the eternal mind and prakṛti in all its stages of evolution. They attributed no functions to puruşa and regarded the evolutions of prakrti for this purușa who was ever in it but never of it, trying in this manner to satisfy the necessity of philosophic thought. The Sankhyas will thus be nearer the truth, nearer because they were, by postulating two entities in the form of prakṛti and puruṣa, both interdependent so to speak, indirectly precluding the possibility of mokṣa, salvation and initiating a principle which would lead to false results in practical ethics. Sattvaguna or purity, the first of the three properties of matter, is after all a kind of material purity inasmuch as that property is inseparable from prakṛti and to set this up as a standard to which men should even try to reach is only to point a way to re-incarnation or fresh evolution (of individual self) and misery, contemplation of prakṛti can raise the contemplator no higher than prakṛti, the source of all mundane existence and misery. Patanjali not satisfied with the practical side of Sankhya set up a kind of training, generally known as Yoga, for attaining the state of eternal bliss and postulated a kind of God for purposes of contemplation. His Yoga led to marvellous physical results but nothing more. It again landed the student in prakṛti only on a higher stage of it. The Vedanta philosophy while trying to meet this difficulty, went off at a tangent in a region to be conscious of which is an utter impossibility. Of Buddhism and Jainism we shall judge later on.
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Essential Principles of Hindusim
The details of these philosophies will interest none but a student of metaphysics. My purpose, therefore, lies in giving you the essential principles which make up what are known as Hinduism and Buddhism. In the first place, therefore, let us see what Hinduism says as to the existence and nature of soul, for the theory of soul must be the foundation of every religion which deserves a name. In all ages it has been supposed that