Fundamentals Of Jainism

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Veer Nirvan Bharti

Page 33

BANDHA
25,
prowess, and of infinite happiness, as sensations of pleasure and pain through the senses. On the other hand, attraction and repulsion, which are the properties of matter, assume the form of attachment and hatred, giving rise to all kinds of emotions and passions, greed, anger and the like. Another effect of the unhappy union between spirit and matter is the liability to death from which pure spirit is perfectly immune, but which, together with its companion, birth, is a constant source of dread to an un-evolved, that is to say, an unemancipated soul. The fusion of spirit and matter also exposes the soul to danger from another quarter from which it enjoys complete immunity as pure spirit. This additional source of trouble consists in the inflow of fresh matter in consequence of the operation of the forces magnetism, chemical affinity and the like, residing in the material already in union with the soul. As gaseous matter is not liable to combine with the element of earth in its natural purity, but becomes defiled by it when existing in the condition of water, So, owing to the influence of the material already in combination with it, does the soul become liable to be forced into union with certain types of matter which cannot assail it directly.
We thus observe that the union of soul and matter is simply fraught with evil for the jiva, whose condition scarcely differs from that of a man thrown into prison and thereby deprived of his freedom of action. The kârmâna sharira is a sort of selfadjusting prison for the soul and constantly accompanies it through all its incarnations, or births. Subject to modification at the end of each form of life, it is again and again attracted into a new womb, organising, mechanically, the outer encasement of gross matter by the energies inherent within its own form.
Thus the conditioning of the physical body, and of the circumstances depending on that bodymadescent, family, status, wealth and the like is the result of the mechanical operation of the force of karma stored up in the karmana sharira.
This karmic force is dealt with by the Jaina Siddhanta under the following eight heads
(1) jñanavaraniya, or the knowledge-obstructing group;
(2) darsanávaraniya, or the class of forces which interfere with perception;