Studies in Jaina Philosophy

SR No.: 001616
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Nathmal Tatia
Publisher: Jain Cultural Research Society
Publication Year: 1951
Total Pages: 366
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, Knowledge, Yoga, & Epistemology
File Size: 9 MB

Page 264

IV. 17
MATERIAL NATURE OF KARMAN
227
does not blink the difficulty by admitting beginninglessness, but only asserts a fact which is admitted by all the other schools. The NyāyaVai esika leaves the initiative in the hands of God, and yet he has to admit that God only gives the fruits of the past actions and cannot determine anything of His own accord. The Jaina does not believe in any Divine Power taking interest in the destiny of the universe. This is of course a digression. In contrast with the concrete mutual co-operation of the soul and the karmic matter, the Sārkhya-Yoga envisages only an apparent relation between immutable consciousness and prakyti. The Jaina, as a thoroughgoing realist, smells grounds for refutation of realism itself in the Sankhya-Yoga conception. Once we are unfaithful to our experience and tread the path of absolutist logic, we are sure to enter the pitfall of subjectivism or, worse than that, nihilism. The Jaina philosopher goes so far as to say that, in the state of worldly existence, the soul possesses, in common with the karmic matter with which it is associated, material form (mūrtatva) which is regarded as only a characteristic of the material things.1 The Buddhist conceives the condition of the world order as lying exclusively in the consciousness. But the Jaina considers this as another untenable extreme exactly like the counter-extreme of the Sankhya-Yoga who regards the condition as lying exclusively in the prakrti. We have already recorded the objections against the position. The Jainas distinguish between the material karman called dravya-karman, and its spiritual counterpart called bhāva-karman. The former is also called āvarana (cover) and the latter dosa (defects).2 The defects are the passions or privations and perversions of the capacities of the soul while the covers are constituted by karmic matter that brings about those privations and perversions. The material karman and its spiritual counterpart are mutually related as cause and effect, each of the other.4 This is possible only if the worldly existence is accepted to be without beginning. And the Jaina, like all the other schools, finds no difficulty in admitting it."
That Hatt' 49 # . . 1 Cf. ahavā ņeganto 'yam samsārī savvahā amutto 'tti jam anādi-kamma-santati-pariņāmāvanna-rūvo so.
-Dharmasangrahanī, gāthā 626. 2 Vide Astasahasri on ÄMi, 4 (pp. 50-51).
3 Gommațasāra, however, regards the potency of the material karman as the bhāva-karman-Karmakānda, 6. But this view is not very appealing and logical.
4ff. doşăvaranayor jīva-pudgala-pariņāmayor anyonya-kāryakāraņa-bhāvahapanarthatvāt ... Astasahasrī, p. 51.
5 Cf. jīvasya bhāvāsravo ... kaşāyādiņ... sa ca karma-bandhānusārato 'neka-prakāro... karma punar nļņām anekaprakāram kaşāya-višeşād bhāvakarmaņa iti hetu-phala vyavasthå. parasparăśrayān na tadvyavasthe 'ti cen, na, bijankuravad anāditvāt kārya-kāraņa-bhāvasya, tatra sarveşam sampratipatteś ca-TSIV, p. 447.