YJA Convention 1994 07 Chicago IL First

Author(s): Young Jains of America (YJA)
Publisher: Young Jains of America YJA USA

Page 32

Gods. The Tirthankars used this world as a spring-board to
"...dart thy spirit's light Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might Satiate the void circumference."
knows since how long man has existed on it. The Jain philosophers have only chosen to define the cycle of Time. Ages of increasing misery are followed by ages of increasing bliss and vice versa. Thus the eternal round goes, cycles of six ascending and six descending eras following each other in endless and beginningless succession.
Once the soul is redeemed, there is no coming back:
"That benediction which the eclipsing curse Of birth can quench not...now beams on me Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality."
"From low to high doth dissolution climb. And sink from high to low, along a scale Of awful notes, whose concord shall not
fail."
God is a synthesis of all redeemed souls; it is Paramatma, the super-soul. It differs from other souls in that it is all-knowledge and secondly, it is free from the misery of births and deaths - the eternal cycle of transmigration:
Recognizing this immutable law of nature, Shelly exhorts us to be always seeking, to be always hoping for the better:
"Be through my lips to una wakened earth The trumpet of a prophesy! O wind, If winter comes, can spring be far behind."
"The one remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadows fly."
What is death in common parlance is but the shedding off of its mundane bondage by the soul and the realization of its true self:
"Thy dales and hills are folding from my
view; Swiftly I mount, upon wide-spreading
pinions, Far from the narrow bounds of thy dominions Full joy I feel, while thus I cleave the air."
Such in brief, is the Jain outlook on life. A corollary follows. In that too, the same poets agree with us. If we deny God as the creator of this universe, the natural question is: "How did this cosmos come into being?" The answer is another question. "Did the hen come first, or the egg?" - Nay, there is no beginning, there is eternity at both ends:
None showeth the right way; Each praises his own whosoever ye ask. But each looks from one angle To establish his own viewpoint. As it is not viewed from all facets This becomes a froth. The Vedantist speaks of the Brahman Believing him to be the only reality. The Mimansaka speaks of the Karma Which arises at one's own doings. Says the Buddhist, the Buddha has shown, The transitoriness of everything. While the Naiyaika has the notion of a Creator, To a Carvaka it's all a dream, And to others it is all void, And then they have other differences. Thus each extols his own viewpoint And none takes an all-pervasive view of reality, Still calling himself the Ominscient. Says Cidananda, only the seeker can find The Right Way shown by the Jina.
"The types and symbols of Eternity, Of first, and last, and midst, and without
end."
Or as the geographers would put it, the nebula cooled and the earth came into being. No one
By Cidananda
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Jain Education Intemational