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Individual and Society in Jainism : 115
beautiful and costly as fairy palaces, and he takes it round the city in gorgeous processions, on golden cars followed by crowds of singing women in gay-coloured, gold-glittering sarees: still he knows that his god dwells high beyond all this, and that all this bhakti, or pious service is nothing but an expression of his own admiration for his chosen ideal, and a kind of expedient to bring it closer before his eyes and the eyes of the world, both of whom are pretty well in need of it.
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Jinahood shares the quality of all ideals, to be, in spite of - or perhaps just on account of its undiminished and undiminishable attractiveness,, high above the bodily and mental standards of its admirers and imitators. And even Jaina-monkhood, its reflection on the rough mirror of actual life, is high above the standard of average man, and will always remain restricted - owing to the diversity of human dispositions to a few privileged individuals, wanderers as it were, on the heights of humanity. The institution of monkhood and all the other institutions of Jainism presupposing the world as it really is and humanity as it really is, the Scriptures do not account for the question as to what would be come of the Universe if all people would turn monks, and it remains undecided whether that venerable Muni was right, who replied to the idle questioner that in such a case the good Karmas of mankind would cause wish-trees to grow, and streams of amṛta to flow, and gods to descend from their celestial abodes and serve them.
But even if it is not possible for everybody perfectly to come up to that ideal, still, merely acknowledging it to be an ideal, and trying to cultivate as many of its virtues as one's constitution allows, even thus much is considered to be a step towards advancement.
This is what I think to be the secret of Jainism, and what is, at the same time, a mental attitude without which a real advancement of human culture is not possible. We are living in a generation which
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