From IIM Ahmedabad To Happiness

Author(s): Vijay K Jain
Publisher: Vikalp Printers

Page 86

FROM IIM-AHMEDABAD TO HAPPINESS
duration, is determined by the intensities of our passions. Our wicked activities, of body, speech and mind, engender negative or harmful karmic matter to the soul, and virtuous activities are responsible for bringing in positive matter in association with the soul. That is how we earn punya (merit) and pāpa (demerit) through our actions and behaviour. Wicked activities of the body include killing, stealing and physically torturing someone. Falsehood, harsh and uncivil language are wicked speech activities. Entertaining thoughts of violence, envy, calumny are some wicked thought-activities. In general, where ignorance is not an excuse, any activity performed with evil intentions is wicked and the one performed with good intentions is virtuous.
Our soul is unable to enjoy its natural perfection in respect of knowledge, perception and happiness due to the forces arising from its fusion with matter, engendered by our own actions. The soul, thus, becomes vulnerable by our own inclinations, longings and desires. It is our own longings for the things of the world which go to weaken our native vigour. Our free nature is, however, constantly at war with our evil inclinations and pursuits as our soul is in constant search for that elusive happiness. It is but common sense to say that unless we ourselves desist from the doing of the evil and banish it from our hearts, no one can do it for us from without. With the advent of this wisdom and its concomitant state of desirelessness, the pole of magnetism changes, and the particles of matter, instead of being attracted and held together with the soul, are repelled and dispensed. Giving up of desires which produce the condition of weakness in the soul must necessarily bring about its liberation from the thraldom of matter, called bondage of karmas.
There are diverse means prescribed in religions the world over for changing the negative condition of the soul and for ridding it of its harmful desires. They aim at engendering the spirit
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