The plan I have endeavored to follow in
this book is the procedure mentioned earlier (on pages 17-18), synstatis,
analysis, and synthesis making respectively the parts I, II, and III of
the book.
The Jain doctrines are summed up in nine
fundamental truths; and to put together the four sections of part II, we
perhaps cannot do better than give these nine principles, prefaced with
the two remarks that 1) reality exhibits distinct and contrary aspects,
such as permanence and change, etc., 2) the whole truth about anything
cannot be expressed in one predicate.
SUMMING UP
We live socially in a real and, in a
sense, everlasting universe of sentient, conscious beings (jiva), and of
inanimate, insentient, unconscious things (ajiva). We attract (asrava)
subtle forms of matter to ourselves, and we assimilate it (bandha); the
natural qualities of the soul are thus more or less obscured, and,
consequent various conditions of weal (punya) and woe (papa) are
experienced. We have been doing this, and suffering the consequences for
ever in the past,-before birth and since, perpetuating our bodily
existence through deaths and rebirths continually. This continual
attraction and assimilation of matter generates in us energies which are
not essential factors of the soul's existence, but which hinder the soul's
natural activities. These unnatural energies may be stopped and destroyed
by stopping the influx (samvara) and by ridding the soul of matter (nirjara).
This is effected by practicing the thirty-five ordinary rules of conduct,
self-control, twelve special rules of conduct, and concentration, as
described in the preceding pages; and by practicing more advanced forms of
mental and moral disciplines, not given in this book. In this process of
stopping the inflow and of ridding the soul of matter, the individual
develop gradually through fourteen stages, in which there appears, more
and more, unimpeded activity of the immortal self, in the form of right
knowledge, wisdom, love, strength, blissfulness, etc., until, at the
finish, every atom of physical matter in combination with the soul and the
consequent ignorance, foolishness, cruelty, weakness, pain, misery, etc.,
are removed from us for ever (moksa).
The above statements are put forward as
being literally true; they are not figurative or mystical; they are about
concrete realities, are not abstractions, and are of universal application
to living beings.
