What is Jainism

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

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ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES
To begin with, Jainism explains the nature of happiness which all are athirst for. It is obvious that the sensual pleasures do not satisfy the soul, however much they might tickle the senses for the time being. Sensual pleasure is essentially impermanent, depends on the contact with other things and bodies, involves trouble and pain in its obtainment, creates worry and uneasiness after its experience, leads to strife with those who happen to be engaged in the pursuit of the same object, and gives rise to misery in old age and on the impairment of the senses on which alone its enjoyment depends. No one who has analysed his ideas can possibly find anything in common between the ideal of happiness which he seeks and the sensual gratification described above. What one really wants is the happiness which the Gods enjoy undying, unabating, soul-enrapturing happiness- not the temporary gratification of lust, but the exhilarating rhythm of ecstasy, delight or bliss, whatever it might be called.
This ecstatic delight which is neither evanescent nor the source of sorrow and pain, like the gratification of sensual lust, is really the nature of the soul, though through ignorance it is unaware of the fact. The proof of this is to be found in the fact that the pleasure one experiences on the successful performance of some task comes from within and is independent of the senses. Analysis reveals the fact that the essence of this kind of happiness lies in the notion of freedom, so that whenever the soul is freed from some irksome duty, obligation or restraint and all kinds of activities except the unrestrained 'pulsation' of freedom are only the different forms of bondage-its natural delight (from de, intense, and light, lightness), hence freedom, at once manifests itself. The soul is the rhythm of free activity of the selfconscious force, the living essence or 'will-to-be,' and feels dull and heavy when burdened with external and unnatural tasks and obligations. Hence the removal of its obligations and restraints re-establishes its pure rhythm of intense lightness, that is, freedom, and enables it to enjoy its svabhavic ananda (bliss). It follows from this that when all its obligations and tasks are removed, the soul must necessarily experience the purest kind of delight, which, being svabhavic (pertaining to its own nature), can have no ending.