Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

Page 274

THE JAINA DOCTRINE OF RELEASE
only prerequisite to their communication being that the candidate should have adopted an ascetic way of life after fulfilling the preliminary disciplines of his normal secular duties; that is to say, they are exclusive only in a spiritual, not in a genealogical way.80
In Vedic Brāhmanism the domestic cult serves the departed Fathers sent ahcad to the Father-world, who require ancestral offerings lest destruction in the form of absolute dissolution (nivstti) should overtake them. The cult, in other words, serves the end of continued life, defending the dead against the terrible "dying again" (punar-mītyu) through which their existence would be brought to its final term. This is in diametrical contrast to the chief concern of aboriginal, pre-Aryan India, which was, as we have seen, lest life in its painful round should not end. The rituals of the secular cult here were practiced not for the continuance, but for the amclioration, of existence-the averting of ill-fortune and sufferings during the present life, as well as the avoidance of descent to the painful purgatories or rebirth in the kingdom of the beasts. Celestial bliss was desired as infinitely preferable to the agonies of the lower realms, but beyond that, there was the still higher good known to the one who would never again be involved in any form at all.
Omnis determinatio est negatio: all determination of the lifemonad through the karınic influx that makes for individualization detracts from its infinite power and ncgates its highest possibilities. Hence the proper goal is restitutio in integrum, restitution of the life-monad to its innate idcal state. This is what is known in Sanskrit as kaivalya, "integration," the restoration of the faculties that have been temporarily lost through being obscured. All entities as we see them in the world are in varying degrees imperfect, yet capable of perfection through proper effort and the consequent insight. All beings are intended to be omniscient, omnipotent, unlimited, and unfet80 Cf. supra, pp. 59-60.
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