Samayasara

Author(s): Kundkundacharya, J L Jaini
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

Page 11

was a useful thing not made before; if the latter, the Creator is a frivolous wastrel, or simly puerile in making, and then breaking the Universe,
If the Universe is created by God as an absolutely new thing, it must follow that before its creation God was not Krita Kritya, one so perfect that nothing remained to be done by him. If he only recreates a destroyed Universe, then the Juina explanation (that the Universe is uncreated and passes through a sort of birth and death at the junction of Avasarpini and Utsarpini semi-cycles of time) is simple and sufficient. If it be said that there must be some creator (as distinct from some Cause or Co-existence or Sequence) of everything, then there must be some Creator of God, and so on ad infinitum.
Further, like creates like. God as Pure Soul can create only Living Soul. How then can He create non-living unconscious matter out of Himself ?
The Jaina doctrine is that the lifeless, non-living, unconscious Universe is eternal and uncreated, and it evolves and revolves within its own countless attributes and modifications for ever, and that it undergoes even radical, catastrophic changes in Space and Time, which the History of all Nations records as the Deluge, the Mahabharata, the Great War, the Pralaya, etc., etc., etc. Is this doctrine not more soul-satisfying, simple and stamped with cogency and Truth than an attempt to explain things by the doctrine of Creation ? Creation thus being only the creation of its Perfect condition by the Pure Soul, it is easy to see that all else in the Universe, from the point of view of conscious, living, knowing Soul, is Imperfect.
Obviously Imperfection is only tolerated because and so long as we cannot get rid of it. Therefore all worldly endeavour, being the child of the living Soul's union with non-living matter, is to be merely tolerated ; to be shunned ; to be renounced. When renunciation is impossible or impracticable, it has to be merely tolerated and controlled and regulated so as to keep it within the limits of the most minimum harm to Perfection.
A clear intellectual perception and a persistent, practical pursuit of this in our daily life is essential to keep us true to the Centre of