Sramana Tradation

Author(s): G C Pandey
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 40

LECTURE TWO MORAL AND SOCIAL OUTLOOK OF ŚRAMANISM
It is a common enough notion now-a-days that social life is built round economic and political structures and that the moral attitudes of a society are somehow derivative from such realities. On the other hand, it is perhaps truer to say that man is essentially a moral being and that his moral consciousness, however inarticulate, is the matrix out of which his social attitudes evolve. In the western tradition man has been defined as a rational or social animal; in the Indian tradition, man is distinguished from the animal as a 'moral being'. As a famous verse runs “food, sleep, fear and sex are common to men and animals : Dharma is what distinguishes them. If men are without Dharma, they are like animals".
Dharma or morality has two aspects, an objective context of norms or prescriptions (vidhi) and a subjective sense of value (artha) to be realized through volitional efforts (Pravrtti-vişa ya, kštisādhya). It includes socially recognized rules of behaviour and an inner sense of desirability or rational seeking. In the Vedic tradition the source of moral norms is ultimately the Vedic-revelation. Subject to the ultimate authority of the Vedas, the Smộtis, the example of the good and the subject's own conscience act as further sources of dharma. Śramanic tradition the emphasis is on the example and precept of the founding teachers as illustrating the spiritual ideal as available to any one in his own heart. Universally available principles inscribed in the luminous book of the heart thus become the source of guidance in moral life
"carittam khalu dhammo jo so samo tti niddiqho mohakkhohavihiņo pariņāmo appaņo hi samo 1/
(Pravacanasāra,) Morality lies in conduct, in equanimity, in the equanimous, luminous and untroubled modification of the soul. As a form of self-consciousness morality synthesizes subjectivity and objectivity, inner attitude and