________________
7. GOMMATSARA, KARMA-KAND
KARMA KANDA, in brief, is a scientific analysis of Evil, of Sin. Evil is material, as God or the Pure Soul is certainly immaterial. The Jiva Kanda deals primarily with the Soul; the Karma Kânda with the material and self-forged Karmic fetters of this soul. It describes the matter and manner of this bondage, so that true and accurate knowledge may help the imprisoned, embodied soul to live a life leading to freedom and Bliss.
Indeed the only use of true books--the "Bibles” of the world-is to teach people how to live. Otherwise they are a "dull and endless strife”, and the overproduction of books on all subjects and in all countries may well be called a prostitution of the Press, and distraction and dissipation of the human intellect. The Press is like the Frankenstein of old, which created by man, has mastered him to the strangling point. The fiction magazine with its teachings of crime and lasciviousness, the daily newspaper with its reports of divorces, dacoities, and all the dirty details of human defects and aberrations, are the greatest instruments of the Devil. Our costly and artificial systems of education and Government also seem to be open to the same objection mostly. Well have the Conquerors of pain and ignorance (the Jinas) prohibited frivolous talk, jests, pranks, stories of sex, crime, political gossip etc., as Prâmáda (carelessness) leading to entanglemen (mundane life), and obscuring the real qualities of the soul. Saint Umasvami's Tattvâriha Sútra* gives the eternal, patent remedies and procedure for lessening and removing human ills.
It is a very long process to show the application of these remedies to our many and complex necds of every-day life; and it is obviously impossible to indicate their application to individual needs. But the remedies are there, and every man and woman, knowing his or her own faults and frailties, needs and desires, can easily find guidance after studying those general rules of right human conduct. The test of the pudding is in the eating thereof; and the test of the value of these teachings is when a man follows them and finds that they cure his weakness and sorrow and give him peace, power, calmness, a noble delight in his own work and life, and joyous co-operation and brotherly service in his relations with his neighbours and living beings generally. In one word, these teachings instil into one an insight of his being a chip of the eternal Omniscience and Omnipotence which we call GOD, and at the same time excite him into an easy, almost instinctive, realisation of his being a happy member of the Universal Fraternity of all Living Beings.
Gommața Sâra, Karma-Kâņda is really a complement of Jiva Kâņda of
* Supra Book 2, pp. 17 to 21.
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
