________________
THE SEVEN TATTVAS
49
5.12 The Path to Liberation : Briefly stated, the path to liberation is the acquisition of Right Faith, Right Knowledge and Right Conduct. These are called the three jewels (Ratan Triya).
As stated earlier, faith is the conviction in the correctness of knowledge. It is acquired by self experience, experiments, deep study and rational thinking, but needs an open mind free from bigotry and passions. It is the passions which do not let us have faith in virtues like non-violence, truth, non-stealing, detachment etc. But without following these virtues, passions cannot be controlled or destroyed and these virtues cannot be followed without faith in their utility. It is a vicious circle and not easy to break. It is easy to have faith in a knowledge which is helpful to our passions and desires and which does not advocate any self-control, renunciation or austerities on our part. For such a knowledee, we may even forego experimental evidence and experience, what to say of rational thinking and seem to have faith straightaway. We are prepared to put such a knowledge to practice. But surely such a knowledge is with us from times immemorial and needs no learning. Everyone is known to be an expert in the knowledge leading to sensual gratification. The results, as we all know, are not happy. Such a knowledge is, therefore, a false knowledge and faith in it is a false faith. Right knowledge is that which can lead us to eternal bliss and the faith only in such a knowledge is called the Right Faith. Unfortunately, it is not easy to gain personal experiences or try experiments to verify the correctness of right knowledge. All such actions based on right knowledge will only modify our karma prakritis and the result at any given time will be due to overall effect of total karma prakritis (old and new) and it will not be possible to separate out the effect of new actions to verify the right knowledge. The conviction can only arise through a slow process of deep study and following a conduct based on it, so that gradually our passions and instincts are subdued and we are able to exercise discrimination and judgement with an open mind to perceive the truth in the knowledge. The perception of truth is nothing but faith and conviction. It is the Samyaktva Darshana (literally also). The other way to have faith and conviction is through the words and deeds of those learned men who, having acquired right faith, right knowledge and practising right conduct, have attained so much spiritual powers that their example acts like an experiment or experience. Without Right Faith, it is not possible to follow the Right Conduct based on the Right Knowledge. The knowledge and conduct, even though
Jain Education International
For Personal & Private Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
