Samayasara

Author(s): A Chakravarti
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 94

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SAMAYASARA
sacrifice. The unsophistical man of the religion associates with absolute reality, the object of his religious adoration and worship and maintains that to be the fountain head of all good and valuable. The metaphorical conception of Brahma, therefore, must live side by side with popular religion and must live in accordance with Vedic ritualis m. Sankara manages to satisfy all these demands by postulating the fictitious deity of a lower Brahma who may be considered real from the practical and relative point of view though he cannot hide his real inanity from the vision of the enlightened. The ordinary man may continue his traditional worship, the orthodox vaidika may perform his usual sacrifices quite unper turbed on the assumption that there is an object of devotion and worship in his Isvara. In this matter, Sankara seems to take a lesson from the Mimārsakas who repudiate the conception of a God at the same time insisting upon the efficacy of worship and sacrifices which they hold are intrinsically efficacious not depending upon I śvara. Sankara agrees with Kumarila the great Mimarsaka teacher and lets alone the traditional ritualism unhampered by metaphysical speculation. It is a peculiar mentality the like of which we have in Hume. After proving the unsubstantiality of human personality and the external world Hume exclaims that the world will go on, nevertheless, as if these things were quite real. This kind of estrangement between life and metaphysics life getting on in spite of metaphysics would only establish the undeniable truth that life is more than logic. To allow concrete life to exist by sufference, to recognise its reality from the vyāvahărika point of view, may instead of proving the reality of the concrete world, really establish the bankruptcy of the underlying Metaphysics.
JAINISM, ITS AGE AND ITS TENETS The term Jainism which means faith of a Jaina is derived from the word Jina which means the conqueror or the victorious. Jina means who conquers the five senses, destroys all the karmas, and attains of Omniscience or Sarvajñiahood. The person who performs tapas or yoga attains such a self-realisation and omniscient knowledge or kevala jñana. After attaining self-realisation and after acquiring Omniscience, the Jina spends the rest of his time in Dharmaprabhavana or preaching the Dharma to the mass of human beings. Not satisfied with his own self-realisation, he engages himself in the noble task of helping his fellowbeings with his message of Dharma which would enable the ordinary mortals to reach the summum bonum of life and attain the same spiritual status of perfection which he himself has acquired. Because of this noble task of showing the path of spiritual realisation or Mokşamärga, Jina is also called Tirtharkara. This term Tirthankara means one who helps human beings to cross the ocean of Samsára by providing them with a vessel to sail with in the form of Dharma. Jinadharma is the boat which is provided for the human beings for the purpose of crossing the ocean