The Jain 1988 07

Author(s): Natubhai Shah
Publisher: UK Jain Samaj Europe

Page 97

= lain
The treatment in the book is simple and logical. destroyed by stopping the influx The nature of the universe, according to the (samvara) and by ridding the soul of Jains is first described. Man as he actually is matter (nirjara) ... In this process of forms the next section: it is rather technical, but stopping the inflow and of ridding the clear, it is largely taken up with an exposition of soul of matter, the individual the traditional 158 kinds of karma (which he develops gradually through fourteen calls 'energies'). Man as he actually is gives way stages, in which there appears, more to Man as he may become, a single page on the and more, unimpeded activity of the siddha and moksa. Then the longest section is immortal self, in the form of right entitled 'Means to the End and deals with the knowledge, wisdom, love, strength, stages of spiritual development and the rules of blissfulness, etc., until, at the finish, conduct, bringing the subject away from theory every atom of physical matter in to practice.
combination with the soul and the
consequent ignorance, foolishness, Here is the summing up.
cruelty, weakness, pain, misery, etc., We live socially in a real and, in a
are removed from us for ever sense, everlasting universe of
(moksa). sentient, conscious beings (jiva), and of inanimate, insentient, unconscious
The nine fundamentals of Jain thought (tattvas, things (ajiva). We attract (asrava)
jiva, asrave, bandha, punya, papa, samvara, subtle forms of matter to ourselves,
nirjara and moksa, could hardly be more clearly and we assimilate it (bandha); the
expressd. natural qualities of the soul are thus
The last words in the book are these: more or less obscured, and
The above statements are put consequent various conditions of
forward as being literally true; they weal (punya) and woe (papa) are
are not figurative or mystical; they experienced. We have been doing
are about concrete realities, are not this, and suffering the consequences,
abstractions, and are of universal for ever in the past, before birth and
application to living beings. since, perpetuating our bodily existence through deaths and
Herbert Warren was in his time almost unique. rebirths continually. This continual
Even today, three-quarters of a century after the attraction and assimilation of matter
appearance of Jainism in Western Garb, very generates in us energies which are
little has been written by Western writers on not essential factors of the soul's
Jainism compared with the vast outpouring on existence, but which hinder the soul's
other forms of Indian religion. It is still difficult natural activities. These unnatural to produce a short reading list of readable and energies may be stopped and available books. It is a puzzle why this is so.
VERO
"Belief in the self and other reals is Right faith their compreshension is Right knowledge, non violence, self control and austirity is Right conduct. These together constitute the way to freedom."
Lord Mahavira
64
Jain Education Interational 2010_03