What is Jainism

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

Page 18

SACRED PHILOSOPHY
श्री परमात्मने नमः
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,
The subject of my discourse before you to-day is the Jaina Siddhanta.
The term Jaina Siddhinta is expressive of the Jaina view of things, and stands for the ultimate conclusions that have been accepted by my co-religionists, the Jainas. According to Jainas, philosophy and rational thought are wedded together indissolubly, so that the divorcing of the one from the other would be fatal to both. For rational thought must tend towards the comprehensive consistency of a systematic science to rise above the petty trivialities of the world, and philosophy must adhere closely to the rigid rationalism of nature to secure the generally neglected harmony between imagination and actuality or fact. This is destructive of the view of those who employ their reason solely to build up metaphysical props for their own notions as well as of those who allow themselves to be exclusively engaged in devising argumentative support for their scriptures. For, if the individual bias is allowed, from the very start, to sway the reason in favour of one particular system, and, therefore necessarily against all the rest, how shall choice be made between the scripture or system of truth and that which is corrupt and false. For the same reason intuition has to be left out of account, till at least such time as a teacher is discovered whose intuitive wisdom can be relied upon as sound and free from error and flaws of any kind whatsoever. It is obvious that if private intuitions be allowed to sway philosophical investigation, every lunatic will have a right to fill the chair of philosophy and every morbid subject of hysteria and hallucination to rank as a patron of science and metaphysics.
We may, then, define philosophy as the process or expression of reflection on the facts of experience, culminating in an all-comprehensive consistent system of thought that is explanatory of the nature -of our surroundings, and, therefore, capable of being harnessed into