Bondage and Freedom

Author(s): Chitrabhanu
Publisher: Divine Knowledge Society

Page 88

enjoy the fruits of those good deeds now, during our present life. But we should be careful not to fritter away or misuse these fruits rather we should think of moulding. our destiny for the next incarnation, ever progressing in our spiritual evolution. It is easy to waste these fruits; so much more difficult to utilise them in shaping our future destiny.
Jainism explains joy and sorrow, prosperity and adversity, and differentiatìon in physical, mental and spiritual abilities through the theory of karma. It explains the problem of inequality and apparent injustice of the world.
Karma denotes that substance which we continually absorb as the result of our bodily and mental activity. We produce karma through all our daily activities. Different kinds of activity produce different kinds of karma which may ripen either immediately or after some time, or even in one or another of our subsequent existences.
And yet, Jain philosophy does not view the soul as hopelessly condemned to act and react upon the consequences of its earlier deeds, as if it were like an automatic machine, and to be beyond all responsibility for its moral attitude and action. On the contrary, it clearly states that the individual is gifted with a certain amount of freedom of will. It emphatically declares that the soul is invested with the freedom to exercise its own resolution.
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