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JUNA RITUAL: OBJECTS OF WORSHIP
absent ideals can be worshipped. It is a mistake to call this idol-worship ; it is ideal-worship and eminently useful. Like all useful things, it may be abused : but that is hardly a sufficient reason for discarding it.
The third view-point is dravya, the thing or person which is to become in the future: for example. respect given to the Prince of Wales as the future King of England, and so forth. It is in this way that the future Tirthaikaras can be worshipped in Jainism.
But it must never be forgotten that it is no one person in particular that tlie Jainas worship. They worship the ideal and nothing but the ideal, namely, the soul in its perfect condition. This ideal may be Christ, Sarkara, Vishnu, Brahma, Muhammad, Jehovah, or any other type of perfection: and this indicates at once the rational basis and the catholie breadth of the Jaina doctrines.
The fourth way is bhāvu, whereby the thing or person in its actual nature is meant, e.g. Lord Mahāvīra to his contemporaries.
It must be noticed that, as faith is the tirst, ritual is the last part of religion in its widest sense. Faith brings us to truth; philosophy makes us grasp it; ethies makes us practise it; and ritual makes us one with it. In Jainisin faith tells us that we have a soul and that it has in it an untold wealth of knowledge, purity, power, and bliss. Jaina philosophy gives us a detailed grasp of this principle, and tells us how karınic matter obscures this Infinite Quaternary ; Jaina
