________________
Individual and Society in Jainism : 95
to the Law of Karma, a living being that causes a fellow-creature, even the lowest developed one, to suffer, be it in order to further its own advantage, or for any other reason, cannot do so without harming its own soul, i.e., without tumbling down a greater or smaller distance from the height of inner development it has reached, and without experiencing, earlier or later, as a mechanical consequence, a disturbance of its own harmonious equilibrium. What means suffering to one, can never be a source of real joy to another, and wherever it appears to be so, it is because our means of perception hinder us from being aware of the slow, but sure effectiveness of this Law of "Eternal Justice." This explains why the word “Ahimsaparamodharmaḥ” i.e., “Non-injury is the highest of all religious principles," acts such an important part in the daily life of the religious inspired Jaina, whose sensible heart, a psychical galvanometer, as it were, warns him of every disturbance of wellbeing in the community of fellow-creatures around him, and spontaneously causes him to insert the resistance of self-control in the circuit of his own activity, or to restrain that of others in its proper course.
Strictly speaking, of all the religions that acknowledge the law of Karma in one shape or another, i.e., practically of all the Indo-Aryan religions, is Jainism with its all-comprising highest theoretical as well as practical importance, and where its place is substantiated more logically than anywhere else. Moreover, Jainism (unlike various other religious systems) does not believe the soul to be completely helpless in its dependence of Karma, i.e., to be hopelessly condemned to act and react, like an automation, upon the consequences of its former deeds, and to be therefore, beyond all responsibility for its moral attitude and actions. But Jainism clearly states that the individual is gifted with a certain amount of freedom of will: a fact which has, up till now, hardly been emphasized to the due extent, by Western writers on Jainism. And still, this tenet forms one of the most important and most complicate chapters of the doctrine
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
