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Kundakunda: The Samayasāra 293
He who thinks that it (i.e. the puruṣa) kills and he who thinks that it is killed, neither of them understands; this neither kills nor is killed, 25
However, the next gāthā of the Samayasāra (248 = JGM 266), which immediately ties the connection between death and karma, makes it clear that there is to be no overt abandonment (i.e. transcendence) of ethics. Action is not about to lose its moral significance, and there can, of course, be no karma-transcending theological solution. In context, therefore, gāthā 247 means that what one apparently does or what one has done to one is exclusively the result of one's own karma. Specifically, an individual's death is determined by the expiry of his āyus- or agedetermining karma.26 Moreover, according to Jaina doctrine a person's āyuş-karma (i.e. his longevity) in this life is fixed definitively at some moment during the last third of his previous life.27 In these circumstances, the belief that you are really instrumental in killing others or that they can be really instrumental in killing you is a delusion. The moment of your death has been fixed by karma long before you were (re)born.
More generally (and moving away from the difficulties posed by this quasi-fatalistic doctrine), what happens to individuals is determined solely by their own actions; each is entirely responsible for his or her own karma.28 And it is precisely the deluded belief that one can affect or be affected by others which causes one to be bound by punya
25 ya enam vetti hantāram yaś cainam manyate hatam ||
ubhau tau na vijānīto nāyam hanti na hanyate || Bhagavad
Gītā 2:19 11 26 Samayasāra 248-252 = JGM 266-270.
27 See JPP p. 126. The strong element of fatalism in this has been discussed by P.S. Jaini (1977).
28 See Samayasāra 253ff. = JGM 271ff.
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