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ways of the world, on the other hand. This arena of conflicting interests is especially evident in business life. By constantly going back to ancient prescriptions ('prescribed religion"), and by regularly reflecting mindfully on one's present status, even a businessman should, in theory, be able to navigate the opposed currents between the whirl of worldly existence (samsara) and ultimate enlightenment or liberation (moksa).
The approach, in this dissertation, follows a path that is quite unusual in the current Western academic climate. By focusing on samyaktva (translated here as 'enlightened perception') it wants to reveal the author's sources of inspiration, the tradition he belongs to, and the lofty ideals on which he models his own behaviour. This is done in an extensive first section, the author's basic demonstration of mastery if you wish, nearly three hundred pages long, and divided into four chapters.
The first chapter describes how the author himself tries to come to his own understanding of samyaktva, using his own words and associative reasoning, but explicitly from within the Jain belief system. The patient reader, provided that he/she is not deterred by the often enumerative and maybe for outsiders apparently pedantic character of Jain religious discourse, is invited to take, as it were, an intimate look into the 'kitchen' of Jain reasoning, oral didactics and internalized tenets.
The second chapter of the first section continuous in the same vein, albeit more directed to the topic of ultimate liberation from worldly existence. This movement is crucial for the underlying research question of the present thesis: how are the worldly ways (vyavahara) reconciled with the ultimate goal and perspective (niscaya)? The answer is not directly expressed on the lines, but more between the lines: by constantly interrelating the three 'gems': right perception, right knowledge and right conduct. By the constant textual reiteration that final liberation should be one's only goal, today's readers (let alone non-Jain business partners) may be overwhelmed by the utterly wary world-negating view as formulated by Jain teachers, be they ascetics or householders: mundane life seems to be filled to the brim with mithyātva (error, falseness, thus 'false belief') necessitating endless rounds of rebirth. The law of karma may be fair, but it is also merciless, even more so when karma is understood to include all mental acts as well, thus exposing all mental 'flaws' such as hidden intentions, double agendas, secret desires etcetera, as being karmically detrimental and binding. Existence, the bare fact of existence, is a predicament.
The third chapter contains some tentative conclusions, and is followed by an appendix with major textual quotes and a bibliography of all primary sources used by the present author to study the concept of samyaktva.
In the author's original conception, this extensive first section could have been the whole piece, a demonstration of mastery of the topic by reading and rating authoritative texts, trying to come to an understanding of samyaktva from within the Jain belief system, and culminating in an internal conversational (re)construction of how the worldly ways are reconciled with the ultimate goal and
