Selected Speeches of V R Gandhi

Author(s): Virchand R Gandhi
Publisher: Vallabhsuri Smarak Nidhi Godiji Jain Derasar Mumbai

Page 84

a complete view of the subject of Karma as the Jainas have understood it. What is Karma ? Before answering this question, it will be necessary to know what the philosophical view of the Jainas is in regard to the Cosmos. They teach that the total reality known as the Cosmos had no beginning and will have no end. More correctly speaking, the Cosmos did not come out of nothing and will never be annihilated. The substance, in the abstract sense, of the Cosmos is permanent ; its activities are changing every moment. If Reality means the highest generalized idea we can form of whatever we come to know, it is the Being, Esse. It being the most abstract idea, it is not divisible. We may say it is one, without a second. Truly speaking, numbering does not apply to abstraction. If, however, Reality means concrete substance having essentially different activities, different not only in degree but in kind, then we have two grand divisions of the Universe : the animate world and the inanimate world. In the Jaina view, the inanimate world consists of matter, two kinds of ether, known as Dharmāstikāya and Adharmāstikāya, and space. The animate world consists of innumerable kinds of living beings, each being a centre of complex forces. Time may be figuratively called a substance, really meaning a generalized mode of thought in regard to the activities of beings and things.
The universe is not merely a congeries of the above mentioned substances, heaped together and set in activity by an extra cosmic creator but is a system by itself, governed by laws inherent in its
70