Introduction to Jainism and its Culture

SR No.: 001605
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Balbhadra Jain
Publisher: Kundkund Gyanpith Indore
Publication Year: 2002
Total Pages: 334
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Religion, & Culture
File Size: 21 MB

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Life is the name of the activity of that being which has prāṇa or life-force or vitality. Things having life-force are called prāṇī or beings. These living beings are saṁsārī or having mundane existence. The liberated supreme souls or Siddhas do not have prāṇa. For them pure cetană or conscious-energy is the only praṇa. The life-force in mundane beings is physical (matter dependent) and has its origin in karmas. It is not similar in all realms and genuses. It has low intensity in some and high intensity in others.
Prāņas are said to be of ten kinds - five sense organs, vital force of mind, vital force of speech, vital force of libido, vital force of age, and vital force of exhalation and inhalation. All these vital forces are cause of life. Although the number of beings endowed with these vital forces is infinite, there is great variance in terms of the development of faculties of knowledge, wisdom, etc. This difference is evident not in beings of different species but also in those of same species.
We can divide all beings of this world in five categories. This categorization is done on the basis of five sense organs. In this world there are some beings that are endowed with just one sense organ, that of touch. This category includes the earth-bodied, water-bodied, firebodied, air-bodied, and plant-bodied beings. In these beings the development of the faculty of knowledge is of extremely low level. With the help of this underdeveloped, extremely low capacity of knowledge and perception they only slightly feel, experience and know sensations of cold, heat, etc. through their sense organ of touch. Due to fruition of intense knowledge and perception veiling karmas they fail to know and perceive much. In spite of this low level of knowledge they have a high degree of passions and sensual desire. For this reason they are always in a state of misery. They are unable to find a way to remove this misery. Even amongst these there is no limit to the misery of the nigoda (dormant) class of plant-bodied beings. During the period of just one inhalation such beings die and take rebirth eighteen times. They have the same body in continued cycles of rebirth lasting for a period longer than the highest imaginable number in known arithmetic. Sorrow depends on the intensity of pa ions. More the passions, the more is the sorrow and lesser the passions, the lesser is the sorrow. In this world these one sensed beings ha the maximum intensity of passions. They are the most miserable beings. This is the most nonevolved and lowly state of beings.
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