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A Hand Book of Jainology ginning. If we recognise the pre-existing causes for all phenomena, we have to accept that this continuous tradition has been going on from times immemorial. In other words, there is no beginning to this. It has been always going on.
THE REAL FORM OF LIFE :
Now, let us think who we are; what we were before we attained this state of existence and how our rise and fall take place.
As it has been said already, this perceptible body belongs to our jiva. The creation and development of the jiva take place according to its earlier karmas. Until the exhaustion of the Ayushya karmas, we have to remain bound to this body of ours. There is jiva in the body and the jiva is governed by its karmas. Therefore, the body moves, acts and functions according to its purpose and intention. The eyes see; the ears hear and the tongue experiences taste; in this manner, even when we eat food it gets transformed in a wonderful manner into blood, muscles bones, hair, nails, phlegm, excretion, urine etc. In the absence of the jiva and the karmas, the body and food cannot by themselves provide all these things. All these reactions continue to take place as long as there is jiva or life in the body. These things cannot be produced by a dead body. • The child that is in the womb of its mother develops in an organised way out of the nourishment it gets from its mother, even in the absence of the other efforts of the mother. Even this condition of the child results frwna cause and here the cause is made up of the jiva and the karmas. On account of this, reason, there are differences between two children of the same mother in respect of the shape of the body, complexion, form, voice and other features. From this, it is evident that we are jivas; that there is no beginning to the process of the jivas gathering karmas and for their becoming bound in body through which they keep gathering karmas.
This jiva spent countless ages in the form of vegetation possessing only one sense and it experienced birth and death countless times. The jiva, as it has been mentioned already,
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