World Of Jainism

Author(s): Vishwanath Pandey
Publisher: Vishwanath Pandey

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THE ORIENT
safe. happy and quiet place for living beings is. Gautama answers thus: “It is what is called Nirvana, or freedom from pain, or perfection which is in view of all; it is the safe, happy and quiet place which the great sages reach”.60 This is what the Buddhists and the Vedantins also have to say about their conception of Nirvana and Moksha respectively. The epithets bliss (Sukham), safe (Yoga Ksemam), immortal (Amritam), etc., are used by all the systems of Indian philosophy, except by the materialists, to describe the summum bonum of life.
ATTITUDE TOWARDS GOD Jainism has been classified under the atheistic schools of Indian Philosophy along with Buddhism and the Carvaka system. The word 'nastika' which is normally translated as atheist, does not convey the exact sense in the context of Indian philosophy. As a matter of fact, the word 'atheism' is a misnomer here. The word 'atheist' (godless a = not theos = God) refers, in the context of western thought in general, to a person who does not believe in the existence of God. Or, an 'atheist' is a person who holds that the sentence "God exists" expresses a false proposition. Atheism, therefore, refers to that system of belief in which there is no God. But the word 'nastika' does not convey this sense in the context of Indian thought. According to Panini, the great grammarian, the word 'nastikq' refers to those persons who do not believe in the efficacy of Karma or in the possibility of rebirth. And since Buddhism and Jainism both accept the theory of Karma and rebirth, they cannot be called as Nastika schools of thought. The belief in a personal God is not strictly adhered to here for being an astika; for, even many orthodox schools of Indian philosophy do not subscribe to the belief in a personal God. In this sense, Jainism and Buddhism are astika systems, although they are commonly understood as nastika systems. This is more so because they do not accept the authority of the Vedas, and the belief in the authenticity of the Vedas or, atleast the absence of disbelief in them, is regarded obligatory for an astika from the orthodox point of view.
But, Jainism and Buddhism are atheistic systems (to use the western concept of atheism) in the sense that they do not subscribe to the belief in a personal God. The concept of God is, atleast so far as Christianity and Islam are concerned, that God is the ultimate reality which is the creator and controller of the spiritual and material world. He is the first cause of the world, but is causa sui Himself. He is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. He is benevolent and merciful. Such a God does not exist in Jainism. For that matter, no system of Indian thought, including even the so called theistic systems, has such
60. Uttaradhyayana, XXIII, 83.