Structure and Functions of Soul in Jainism

SR No.: 001617
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: S C Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith
Publication Year: 1978
Total Pages: 272
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Epistemology, Nyay, & Spiritual
File Size: 16 MB

Page 165

Bliss as an Attribute of the Soul :: 161
proper contexts and levels to make his view difinite and consistent. Hence we are in a position to conclude that feeling is due to a distinct faculty of the soul. This faculty is responsible for the generation of the states of pleasure, pain and bliss.
Pleasure and Pain as Manifestation of the Faculty of Feeling
Pleasure and pain are not the natural manifestations of the substance of the soul. They are the distorted and limited forms of the soul's capacity for feeling. This distortion and limitation, as the Jaina thinks cannot be self-caused. There must be something other than the self to generate the states of pain and pleasure. This would mean that pleasure and pain presuppose some alien agency for their generation. The Jaina conceives the agency of the karmas for this purpose. “The blissful manifestations of the soul disappear being disturbed by the destructive types of karmas."1"The attribute of bliss takes the perverted form on account of the eight kinds of karmas.”? Just as sensuous and perceptual types of knowledge are not natural manifestations of the soul and are caused by the destuction-subsidence of the karmic energies, so also pleasure and pain stand on the same level requiring destruction-subsidence of some karmic energies for their generation. This karmic agency distorts the feeling faculty so as to give rise to the states of pleasure or pain. Environmental factors occupy the same position as in case of sensuous or perceptual knowledge. This necessitates the instrumentality of senses in the process of affection. Senses are channels not only of cognition but also of conation and affection. The physical senses work as pieces of apparatus for receiving the stimuli. The soul is trebly prepared to receive them with its faculties of conation, cognition and
1. Rājamalla: Pañcādhyāyi, II, verse 313 2. Ibid., verse 1107