Atma Dharma

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

Page 17

( 10 ) an original attribute or property of the soul substance. Grief and pain arise from causes external to the soul, and, for that reason, are temporary extraneous conditions of our life. If it were otherwise, that is to say, if pain and misery were the attributes of life, then they should have arisen in the soul in unselfish deeds; since whatever is a natural attribute of a thing always arises without a cause as soon as the obstacle which bars its way is removed from its path. Now, both pain and misery arise from extraneous causes which may be summed up under two general heads for the sake of brevity, namely, (1) the association with that which is undesireable, and (2) the dissociation with what is desireable and desired. They do not arise when we are left to ourselves, that is, without the one or the other, or both of the causes enumerated above.
Indeed, so far as physical pain is concerned, it is the resultant of physical processes or of chemical action between different substances and elements going on in the body, and not a spontaneous growth from within the body or the soul. For the same and other similar reasons, grief and all other mental conditions of the unpleasant type are also foreign to the nature of the soul which is endowed with happiness as its natural attribute, as is clear from the instances analysed above.
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