Book Title: Spiritual Awakening and other Essays
Author(s): Kamalchand Sogani
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

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Page 142
________________ particular kind of effect, and that effect will be good in itself”. It may be noted that ethical judgements regarding good as a means may not be universally true; and many, though generally true at one period, will be generally false at others”l4 where as ethical judgements regarding good in itself are universally true. And besides, we have to assume ourselves that “probable future evils will not be greater than the immediate good”. And there are judgements which state that certain kinds of things are themselves good, they are all of them universally true. In both these kinds of good, the criterion of good as ahiṁsā is to be adhered to. I may say in passing that the principle that the end justifies the means' need not be rejected as immoral if the above definition of good is accepted. For our present purpose, the good means good in itself or the things which are intrinsically good. Now the answer to the question, what is the good, i.e. what kinds of things are intrinsically good according to the Jinist, is as follows : : (1) The first thing which is good for the Jinist is the ahimsā of all living beings (Ahimsā bhutānāí jagati viditam brahma paramam.'s Savve pānā na hantavvā.'6). The Jinist classifies living beings (jīvas) into five kinds, one-sensed to five-sensed Jīvas. The Jinist uses this classification as the measurement of the degree of ahiṁsā. The classification of jīvas is in the ascending order of the importance of jīvas owing to the fact of having evolved consciousness known from the number of senses manifested. As for example two-sensed jīvas are more evolved than the one-sensed jīvas, five-sensed jīvas are more evolved than the one, two, three, and four-sensed jīvas. Thus ahiṁsā will be directly proportionate to the ahimsā of the jīvas classified. The Good ‘Ahirsā of all living beings' means the ahimsā of these living beings. Though this measurement of Spiritual Awakening (Samyagdarśana) and Other Essays 133 Jain Education International For Personal & Private Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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