________________
CHAPTER V
THE JAINA PHILOSOPHY OF KARMA AND OMNISCIENCE
I, The Basic Postulate of the Theory : Its Genesis and Meaning
The soul according to Jaina metaphysics, being constitutionally free and potentially divine. its corruption in the state of worldly existence needs to be explained. If soul is consciousness itself, whence came his association with the body of physical matter ? The Jainas maintain that karma is the matrix of the universe and the whole world undergoes evolution due to karma. Karma is not only the ground-mass of indivi. dual's destiny but also the mould in which anything and everything takes shape. Our past karmas put a world before us otherwise it would not be possible to get appropriate pleasures and pains. Like the Leibnizian world, the set is different for different individuals. As a matter of fact, the function of karma is to produce appropriate experiences including pleasurable and painful ones. Hence, there have to be suitable objective world sets and suitable personal, individual sets, both conditioned by karmas. This will be a sort of idealism which may be called Karmic Idealism - distinct from either the subjective or the objective variety of metaphysical idealism.
Idealism here does not mean idealism in the conventional metaphysical sense. Karma can be either physical or mental and a world determined by karma is not completely a mental or idealistic world. Therefore, when I speak of Karmic-Idealism, I mean something else. A man's karmas are the ideal causes in the sense that they determine what a man ought to
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
