Jain Science and Spirituality

by Medhavi Jain | 2020 | 61,419 words

This essay studies the elements of Jainism and investigates how Jain science and philosophy can give the world answers to through science and spirituality. Instead of interpreting it as a confined, strict philosophy, it is shown that Jainism represents a path towards self-awakening through self-improvement....

3.4. Attaining Right Knowledge

Just as right and wrong, knowledge exist;

‘Right (and wrong) answers do exist however the previous can't be forced from without. The wise searcher of knowledge should be delicate to the furthest reaches of that knowledge: the more he realises the more he understands that he has a lot to learn. Expanding our understanding along these lines includes tuning in to elective perspectives and constantly question our own. It implies being open to new facets of reality or elective perspectives to which we have recently been visually impaired. We ought to know that the reasons why we think something are as significant as reality of that conviction, similarly as intention is as significant as action.’[1]

In fact the very purpose of gaining knowledge is to keep digging, to keep questioning and to keep finding. And in this world of many philosophies we find plenty of the ideas to be thought upon and re-question our own beliefs again and again until we find the most satisfactory answers and that is the pinnacle where we become capable to show someone the way, to answer someone else’s query in an efficient manner.

‘If all living systems are interconnected, then we should see ideas also as parts of a whole, rather than disconnected, abstract concepts.’[2]

As ideas also ooze out from the consciousness and somewhere each idea helps one to move ahead towards the understanding of the whole truth.

Like science, philosophy too provides the freedom to keep exploring and keep questioning one’s own findings. The important point about any discovery or invention is that humans started to be curious about the secrets of the cosmos with their development, that does not mean that even the universe started to exist since then!

‘Consistently, it must be remembered that people just have incomplete comprehension of the universe and the laws of nature. Hence, we ought to be continually mindful of different potential outcomes that will lead us to alter or overhaul our decisions. For instance, the presence of spiritually advanced life in different parts of the universe is a long way from limited by Jains and can keep human haughtiness in check. In this way Jain science is definitely not a confined or selective framework and its decisions are outright facts yet stepping stones while in transit to reality.’[3]

Just like we are keeping track of the solar systems and galaxies, there is definitely a possibility that some other kind of consciousness is keeping track of our activities, and this won’t be an imagination if that consciousness would be much ahead of us, spiritually as well as scientifically.

‘Indeed the Jain sensibility views physics and chemistry, astronomy and cosmology, as some of the most important spiritual disciplines.’[4]

This is the fun part, a pinnacle, an amalgamation, when there seems no difference between science and spirituality rather they become two sides of the same coin. Where to understand one, the other is required to be studied equally deeper.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

LJ. pp. 36

[2]:

LJ. pp. 37

[3]:

LJ. pp. 94

[4]:

LJ. pp. 127

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