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....
Go directly to: Footnotes.
3.7. Bhavana, dhyana, samadhi and samayika
‘According to Patanjali, meditation has three forms: Dharana (idea or image formation), Dhyana (contemplation) and Samadhi (ecstasy). According to the Jain discipline, they are: Bhavana, Dhyana and Samadhi, Dharana and Bhavana are one and the same thing.’[1]
Irrespective of the path one follows, one always comes at an objective conclusion, if one is an honest seeker.
The above statement about two different traditions supports this.
‘Bhavana is likewise equipped for creating material impacts. These impacts contain abolishing troubles of others, relieving infections, achieving a difference in heart in others and influencing them mentally. It brings about changes in the practitioner. It can fix physical and mental deformations. It very well may be connected to multitudinous circumstances. Auto-recommendation is a sort of Bhavana and is gigantically valuable in restoring diseases by a sheer mental effort of the patient.’[2]
Bhavana is closer to the modern day’s law of attraction, where one keeps contemplating about the best and the best happens; by sending positive vibrations into the cosmos, cosmos replies positively too.
‘Unmindful meditation is also called Samayika. Samayika and Dhyana are indistinguishable and Mahavira placed great stress on it. He told Gautama, ‘The soul is Samayika. It, alone, is the content of Samayika.’ It is the real and pure state of consciousness. It means to be in the self.’[3]
Samayika is meditating upon the true self with the feeling of equanimity. In Jain tradition Samayika has been considered very important and everyone (householders as well as the ascetics) is suggested to make it a part of their lives, performing Samayika thrice a day, for forty-eight minutes each. Indeed if one meditates on equanimity for this long, one will have calmer, positive results for sure.
‘It is through body that the spirit receives foreign matter. Piles of molecules go into the spirit through mental activity, discourse and breathing. This invasion will stop, if the body is immobilized. A condition of all out inertia of the body is the condition of meditation.’[4]
This can even be felt, as in a meditative state we feel calmer and the incoming of the karma particles become lighter.
Footnotes and references:
[1]:
MBM. pp. 135
[2]:
MBM. pp. 137
[3]:
MBM. pp. 183
[4]:
MBM. pp. 36