Spiritual Code and Restraints

Author(s): Manu Doshi
Publisher: Manu Doshi

Page 25

autobiography that he repeatedly played the drama in his mind and while visualizing the distress that Harishchandra faced, tears rolled from his eyes. His mind got hold of the idea that every one should be truthful. The importance, that he attached to truth in his life, can be traced to that story.
But all of us cannot be Harishchandras. Sacrificing for the sake of truth is not easy and may be beyond the capacity of ordinary people. In our routine life, we happen to indulge in lies on many occasions. Sometimes we tend to conceal truth for the sake of our self interest. Sometimes we like to tell lies for securing some gain or for averting some loss. Such situations generally arise from our shortsightedness. If we are enlightened enough, we can easily see that the so called self interests are not in our genuine interest. But we are unfortunately not immune from pursuing parochial gain and happen to resort to lies, even though that may be harmful to others.
Total observance of truth being rather difficult, Jainism lays down two levels for its observance. It lays down total observance of truth for the monastic life. Monks and nuns have renounced the worldly life and are not after any material gain. They can therefore afford to make any sacrifice for the sake of truth. For laymen, the insistence is on refraining from making the statements that would grossly hurt others.
The Jain tradition lays down that at least the following five types of statements that involve gross transgressions of this restraint should be avoided, viz. i) sudden utterance that would shock others, ii) disclosure of the close secrets, iii) divulgence of the spousal secrets, iv) wrong teaching and v) forgery. If any one happens to indulge in such transgressions, he should recall the same and beg for their atonement.
But resorting to verbal truth is only a minor and rather superficial aspect of truth. In Jain terminology, we call it Vyavahär Satya or practical truth. Satya has a deeper and subtler implication. The word Satya is derived from 'Sat' which means existence. As such, whatever exists is Satya. The science now conforms that nothing can be entirely destroyed, but Jainism has adopted that truth since the very beginning. It lays down that whatever exists, continues to exist in one form or another and what we term as production or destruction, happens to be a transformation. 'Sat' therefore stands for the everlasting existence. Understanding the nature of everlasting substances and behaving in tune with that nature is therefore real Satya.
It has also to be remembered that Satya and Dharma (truth and religion) are not different from each other. It would be of interest to note that Jainism defines religion as Vatthu Sahävo Dhammo, which literally means that nature of a thing is religion. In this context, Vatthu stands for everlasting substance, which is termed as Dravya. Jainism lays down that there are six such Dravyas in all. Of these, we are mainly concerned with Jiv or soul. For all practical purposes therefore, Satya is soul, which is also known as Brahman, Atmä, Chaitanya, consciousness etc.
To speak and to act in tune with the nature of soul is therefore the religion as well as the truth. This is the supreme truth and is known as Parmärtha Satya as distinguished from