Atma Dharma

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

Page 12

( 5 ) cise the functions of perceiving, knowing, understanding, thinking and desiring, because we are subject to the sway of passions and emotions, because we are capable of showing forgiveness, humility, straightforwardness and contentment, and, lastly, because we are liable to experience pleasure and pain. This very soul of ours, which is endowed with all these attributes, is also the repository of happiness and peace !
If you will ponder over the matter, you will soon realize that the pleasure resulting from such things as food, dress, agreeable company, travel, drama, feminine society and the like, is in reality purely imaginary on the part of the soul. For this reason, it is called imaginary or parâdhîn (dependent upon external things). Whatever a man regards as the source of pleasure will give him pleasure, and whatever as the source of pain will cause him pain. For this very reason the pleasures of the world are our mental products. These are parâdhin, because they are dependent upon our association with things that are desirable and on the avoidance of the undesirable ones.*
*Cf. “ The happiness that is enjoyed through the senses, is dependent on another than one's own self for its experiencing; it is full of trouble, terminable, the cause of inauspicious karma and transient ; in reality, it is only a form of pain.”Parvachansara, by Kundkundáchârya.