|
The
Jain scriptures and the writings of Jain scholars over many
centuries right up to the present day have examined the puzzling
question of the nature of the universe. Modern science has taught us
a lot about the solar system and the great systems of stars beyond.
At the other extreme, scientists have investigated the nature of the
smallest units of matter. We know a lot about the biological nature
of plants and animals and human beings. The great thinkers of
Jainism have looked at these same subjects and have come up with
solutions to many of the problems which have puzzled and, often,
continue to puzzle scientists and philosophers. The solutions are,
of course, expressed in a manner and language different from those
of twentieth-century scientists, hence they may have an unfamiliar
and often difficult sound for modern ears. (Our ways of expression
will sound difficult to
the people of the twenty-fifth century.)
You
will probably ask 'Are the Jain solutions true?' No answer on the
printed page is going to convince you. There are different ways of
knowing things (and Jain thinkers have spent a lot of time analyzing
them). Some things you know because you experience them yourself:
grass is green because you see it, ice is cold because you feel it.
Other things you have to accept because people who know tell you
about them there are jungles in Malaysia, the surface of the moon is
cold and barren. Yet
other things you know through some strange sense you cannot
understand: the thoughts of a close friend, something good (or bad)
is going to happen. So it is with the things
which we are discussing in this chapter. Some fit in with our
actual experience, or we feel instinctively that they are right.
More we accept (or we may reject) because people who know (or say
they know) have explained them. (Jain tradition says that many of
these matters were originally explained by a person who had
attained the highest kind of knowledge, total knowledge or
omniscience.) In many cases we are moving close to or beyond the
frontiers of human knowledge as we possess it now, but it can be
said that very little in Jain science or philosophy is incompatible
with the theories of twentieth-century science. Jain science goes
beyond conventional science in many places, but only rarely do the
two conflict.
This brings us to a most important aspect of the Jain way of looking
at things. Jain thinkers stress that there are different ways of
looking at any particular thing and that truth can take different,
apparently contradictory, forms according to the viewpoint. The
thought processes involved are called anekantavada, literally
the view of 'non-one-sidedness', that is looking at things from all
points of view. The thought processes are then given expression in a
statement that 'in some respects' a certain fact is true, even
though in other respects it is false.
This way of giving expression to the different facets of
truth is known as syadvada, the assertion that 'in some
respects' something is true. The well-known story of the blind men
and the elephant illustrates this. One felt its tail and said that
an elephant is like a rope, another felt its side and
said that an elephant is like a wall, and so on. Each
statement is, of course, true, 'in some respects'. Somebody who
examined the elephant from all points of view, who thought about it
from the view of 'non-onesidedness', would be careful to qualify the
statements of the blind men by saying that 'in some respects' an
elephant is like a rope, and so on.
Or to take another example, is anything, let us say a diamond, everlasting?
We know that a diamond is produced when carbon is subjected to
extreme heat and pressure. So in one respect
a diamond is everlasting, though in different forms, as
carbon for example. In another respect, in the actual form of a
diamond, it is not everlasting. Or again, we say that India is in
the east. But to somebody in China India is in the west.
Syadvada leads, not as some people have interpreted it, to
vagueness in thinking, but to a very precise and
thorough comprehension of reality.
(And it also leads to tolerance of other people's views.)
The
Jain explanation of the universe depends on two fundamental
principles. First, the universe is eternal and
has an actual material existence (a different view from the
Buddhists, for example,
who say that nothing has any permanent existence or any real
material basis). Second there is no eternal all-powerful being, God,
which created the universe or controls it. If the universe is
eternal a creator is excluded and the universe acts and changes as a
result of certain forces built into it.
Everything
in the universe is either living or non-living (jivajiva or ajivaajiva).
Let
us look first at the non-living part. Obviously we shall think of
actual material here, solid or liquid, though at thebasic level it
will be in the form of atoms. Actual material, matter which has
shape and can be touched or otherwise known by our sense organs is
called pudgala. But there are four other kinds of non-living
'substances' (perhaps we would not think of them as 'substances' but
in some ways it is a helpful way of looking at them). The first two
are easy, time and space. The other two show an important Jain
contribution, there is a principle of motion and a principle of
rest, we could call them 'start' and 'stop'. When 'start' operates, things
develop or change, when 'stop' operates on any thing developing it
ceases to do so and is still. So the non-living part of the universe
is made up of matter, located in time and space, and changing or not
as it is acted upon by the principles of 'start' and 'stop'. This is
not too difficult for the non-philosopher to understand!
The living part of the universe is, of course, also affected by time
and space, by 'stop' and 'start'. The word 'ajiva' is
used for the non-living 'substances' so 'jiva' denotes the living
ones. Whole books have been written on jiva: Jain scholars are very
fond of producing elaborate schemes of classification of every
conceivable thing and they have divided jiva up into numerous
different types. We must be clear that a single jiva is an
independent living soul. Everysingle living being, from the greatest
to the tiniest, is an individual eternal jiva. The jiva, like
everything else inthe universe, is eternal though it changes its
material body as it passes from one life to another. At the lowest
extreme there are the tiny nigoda , infinitesimally small and
short-lived, but existing in all parts of the universe. Earth, air
,fire and water are populated by tiny jiva hardly greater than the
nigoda. (It is to avoid their breath harming those in the air that
some Jain monks wear a cloth over the mouth.) Above these are the
jiva which have taken material life in
all the various forms of plants, insects, fish, birds, animals and
soon. Some of these forms of life have only one sense, the sense of
touch, others have two, three, four or, in the case of man and the
higher forms of animal life, five of the senses, to include taste,
smell, sight and hearing. Human beings come in a rather special
category for they have abilities of various kinds which distinguish
them from plant and animal life. Apart from these, it is believed
that regions beyond this world are inhabited by heavenly beings( we
could call them 'gods' as long as we are clear that we are not
speaking of any all-powerful god like the God of Western religion),
and, in the lower regions, by creatures of hell. These four
categories of life, in any of which an individual soul may be
reincarnated, animals and plants, gods, hell-creatures, humans, are
often symbolically represented by the four arms of a swastika. (The
swastika is a very ancient Indian symbol:
it is unfortunate that many people associate it with the
Nazis who stole it for their emblem in the 1920s.)
Jiva
are living beings, that is they have consciousness, they are capable
of knowing things. They are also capable of sensations of bliss.
Indeed it is fundamental to Jain thought that the true state
of a living being is one of complete knowledge and complete bliss,
though this is obscured, in all save the totally liberated soul, by
the particles of karma. Besides
consciousness and bliss the jiva have what is described as 'energy',
really energy in the modern scientific sense, the force which (like
electricity in a lamp or machine) actually makes the individual
souls function. All this a pretty straightforward: if we think of
ourselves as individuals, we have consciousness or the ability to
know things, we have (though not always) the ability to feel
well-being or happiness, and we have something else, some sort of
vital force that makes us operate.
Although
it is possible for the individual soul to be rebornas a 'god' in the
heavenly region, this is not the highest form of life. Sooner or
later even the gods will expire and return to another form of life.
The highest state of life, far different from that of every other
form which the individual soul can attain, is the state of the
liberated soul, of the siddha.
This is the culmination of an almost infinite series of lives
in which the soul, or jiva, has gradually progressed (with many
setbacks on the way) until ina final human life the last vestiges of
that karma which affects the spiritual progress of the soul have
been cleared away and the individual becomes an arhat, with
knowledge widened to infinity. When this enlightened soul's last
earthly body dies the liberated soul achieves the state of moksha
or nirvana and passes to its new and final state in the abode
of the siddha. (The arhat has been cleared of those forms of karma which
obstruct the true functioning of the soul. though the types of karma
which determine the nature of bodily life will have to work out
their effects before the enlightened soul finally achieves moksha.
In each great half-cycle of time twenty-four arhat are known as
Tirthankara: they are the teachers of religious faith and some
writers restrict the term 'arhat' to these).
In
many Jain books diagrams of the universe will be found. They show
the occupied universe, which is usually depicted as having a roughly
human form (in fact it is sometimes drawn like a human body), wider
at the bottom where the legs are spread, narrowing to the waist,
widening out again and then narrowing at the top to the head. This a
convenient symbolic way of showing it. At the very top is the
resting place of the siddha, the liberated souls. Below this are the
upper worlds or heavens, occupying the 'trunk' of the human shape. The
world which we know and the other worlds as well, which are occupied
by humans, animals and plants, are
at the' waist'. Below this again are the underworlds and hells. Outside
there is nothing but boundless empty space where there is no life or
movement or matter. Such a diagram will, of course, be regarded by
many people nowadays as simply a symbolic representation, but it
does show very conveniently in a diagrammatic form the way in which
the various forms of life fit in. These two chapters have considered
in a very simplified way the main principles of Jainism. Jains speak
of nine fundamentals which sum up the principles of Jainism. These
are as follows:
The make-up of the (1) living souls (jiva), universe: (2) non-living substances (ajiva); (3) The principles of merit,
good results in karma
(Punya), (4) demerit, bad results in karma (papa ); (5) The development of inflow into the soul (asrava), karma; (6) stopping inflow (samvara), (7) binding of karma to the soul (bandha), (8) clearing out of karma (nirjara ); (9) The final goal: complete liberation of the soul (moksha).
|
