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MAN AGAINST NATURE
and laid aside by an innumerable host of individual life-monads --the monads themsclves constituting the very matter of the universe-- was one of the major tencts of the pre-Āryan philosophy of India. It is basic to the Sārkhya psychology as well as to Patanjali's Yoga, and was the starting point of the Buddhist teachings.- Absorbcd into the Brāhman tradition, it became blended with other ideas; so that even today in India it remains as one of the fundamental figures of all philosophical, religious, and metaphysical thought. Jainism and the doctrine of Gosāla thus may be regarded as specimens of the way in which the Indian mind, outside the pale of Brāhman orthodoxy, and according to the patterns of an archaic mode of thought rooted in the Indian soil, has from time immemorial experienced the phenomenon of personality. In contrast to the Occidental idea of the everlasting individual, as conceived by the Greeks and passed on to Christianity and modern man, in the land of the Buddha the personality has always been regarded as a transitory mask.
But Jainism, like Buddhismi, disagrees with Gosāla's fatalistic interpretation of the graduated roles of the play, asserting that cach human individual is free to make his own escape. By a sustained act of self-renunciation one can elude this melancholy bondage-which is equivalent practically to an eternal punishment and is out of all proportion to whatever guilt can possibly appertain to the mere fact of being alive. Gosāla's strictly evolutionary interpretation is rejected on the grounds of the repeated experience of actual release by perfected holy men throughout the ages. Those masterly teachers began, like Mahāvīra, by joining the saintly order of the Jaina monks, and ended as the models of salvation. They offer us in their own lives our prime guarantee of the possibility of release, as well as an example of how the narrow exit is to be passed. Instead
02 Cf. supra. p. 60. Editor's note, and discussions infra, Chapters II and IV.
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| SR No. | 007309 |
| Book Title | Philosophies of India |
| 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 |