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COMPENDIUM OF JAINISM
practises samitis and guptis, subdues his senses, calm, free from passions and detached from worldly affairs.?
These thought-paints change according to the degree of change in the purity of mind and thought. These changes bring in twenty six kinds of variations in the six thought-paints.
It should be clear from what has been said above, that the Leśyās are different conditions produced by the influence of different Karmas; they are not therefore dependent on the nature of the soul but on the Karmas which accompany it. What produces Leśyā is therefore the subtle substance of Karmic matter. That is why the Leśyās have colours, tastes, smells, touches, degrees, character, variety, duration, effect, etc.
The black, blue, grey, red, yellow and white Leśyās have, respectively, the colour of a rain-cloud, of a blue ākāśa or sky, the colour of a pigeon, of vermilion, of orpiment and of flowing milk. Their tastes are, respectively, more bitter than the fruit of neem-tree, more pungent than Trikatua, sourer than that of unripe mango, infinitely better than that of honey, and infinitely better than that of milk or pounded milk. The smell of the first three bad Leśyās is infinitely worse than that of the corpse of a cow, dog or snake; while the smell of the three good Leśyās is infinitely more pleasant than that of fragrant flowers and of perfumes when they are pounded. Touch of the first three is infinitely worse than that of a saw or the tongue of a cow while that of the last three is infinitely more pleasant than that of cotton, butter or sirişa flower.*
Since the thought-paints vary with the intensity of passions and the activities, their presence and the degree of colouration would depend upon the stage of spiritual development of each individual. Even a wrong believer in the first stage can have white thought-paint, if his passions are very mild while a right believer in the fourth stage may have black thought-paint, if he is actuated by strong passions. Only the white thought-paint is formed in a person who has attained any of the stages of spiritual
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