Gandharavada

SR No.: 006739
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Esther A Solomon
Publisher: Gujarat Vidyasabha
Publication Year: 1966
Total Pages: 400
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

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of defects (doșa) like perversity of attitude and on account of activities (yoga) (1840).
Here a further question arises. The Buddhists believe that an emancipated soul comes to worldly life over and over again. What is Lord Mahavira's view in this respect? An emancipated soul is not reborn, does not come back to worldly life, since there is no cause for it, as a sprout cannot come up when there is no seed. The cause or seed of rebirth is karman and that is not not present in the case of an emancipated soul. Hence mokṣa is eternal and the emancipatel soul too (1841).
The emancipated soul is eternal also because being a substance it is incorporeal, like the sky. The contingency of its being ubiquitious also like the sky should not be urged because inference goes against this. Soul cannot be ubiquitous because it is karts, doer, agent, like a potter. That it is an agent is established by the fact that it is enjoyer, seer, etc. which it would not be if it were not kartr (doer) (1842).
Lord Mahāvīra does not insist on the absolute eternality of the soul. He has to take the trouble of proving that it is eternal only to counteract the Buddhist view of its being non-eternal. But, in fact, for the Jainas all things are of the nature of origination, destruction, persistence. The jar, for example, from the point of view of the mode of lump of clay can be said to perish, from the point of view of the mode of jar to have been produced and it can be said to have persisted in its existence as clay. When we refer to a thing as destroyed, etc. it is only because we have only one aspect of the thing prominently in view. So the emancipated soul can be said to have perished from the point of view of its worldliness, it persists from the point of view of its soulness, its upayoga (conscious activity), etc; and can also be said to have perished from the point of view of its perfection of the first time-point, to have been originated from the point of view of the perfection of the second timepoint and to have persisted as substance, soul, etc. Hence it is sometimes referred to as being eternal, etc. but this is only from different points of view (1843).