Samayasara

SR No.: 006764
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: A Chakravarti
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith
Publication Year: 1989
Total Pages: 370
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Agam, & Canon
File Size: 20 MB

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SAMAYASARA lower animals of the zoological and botanical kingdoms which are found with mankind in this world. The fourth term refers to the beings in the hell or the Naraka-Netherworld. The Devaloka or the upper world and Narakaloka the world of hell are recognised in Jaina cosmology, according to which the concrete world of living beings men and lower animals is called the Majhyama loka, the middle world. All beings of these four different groups are called Samsāra Jivas, that is a Jiva which is subject to the cycle of birth and death, which cycle is denoted by the term Samsara. All Samsārajsvas are embodied according to their individual spiritual status. Each Samsăric soul is born with a body and continues to live as embodied soul subject to growth, old age, decay and death; when it has to quit its body in search of another body it acquires another body consistent with and determined by its own karmic conditions. Throughout the series of births and deaths thus associated with the appearance and disappearance of the corresponding body the underlying Jiva or the soul is a perpetual entity serving as a connecting thread of unifying the various births and deaths associated with that particular Jiva. This Saṁsāra Jiva associated with its own karmic bondage and its own corporeal existence is considered to be uncreated and therefore beginningless. For the Jaina metaphysician the question when did the soul get associated with material body is a meaningless question, because they say Samsāra is anādi. The cycle of births and deaths has no beginning. Whatever may be the difference of opinion between Jaina metaphysics and the other schools of Indian thought, in this particular point all agree. All maintain that the Saṁsāra is Anādi. Hence no school of Indian thought would allow the question when did Samsāra begin to be a sensible question. While all the systems maintain that Samsāra is beginninglessAnadi, all of them do maintain that this series of Samsāra will come to an end. At the time of liberation of the soul from material and karmic bondage it is said to attain Mokşa or liberation. In this respect also they are at one with the Jaina thinkers that the Samsāra Jiva is capable of liberating itself ultimately from the samsaric cycle of births and deaths and of obtaining its form of intrinsic purity when the soul is called Mukta Jiva or Paramatma. Fundamentally therefore there is no distinction between the soul that lives in Saṁsära and the soul that attains liberation or Mokşa. The Jivātmā of the embodied soul in Samsāra is identical with the would be Paramatma. The two are one and the same. The doctrine that maintains that the Jīvātmā and Paramātmā are intrinsically identical is the fundamental Jaina doctrine of Advaitism, which is also the fundamental doctrine of Advaitism of Saukara of latter days. In fact Sarkara dismissed all the other systems which do not accept this doctrine as erroneous ones to be discarded and emphasises this doctrine of identity between the Jivātmā and Paramātmā as his own Siddhänta. The nature of Jiva is Cetana or thought and is therefore quite different from all the other categories which are not $o characterised by Cetana or thought. The other Acetana categories are