Harmless Soul

Author(s): W J Johnson, Dayanand Bhargav
Publisher: Motilal Banarasidas

Page 65

Umāsvāti's Jainism 51 less binding than any other karma; rather, it is passion which is instrumental in bondage. (A possible explanation for this puzzling terminology will be discussed below.) Thus the emphasis is not on activity as such, but on the accompanying mental or emotional state - on the internal rather than the external.
The reason why 'short-term' (īryāpatha) karma is posited at all, since it has no effect, will emerge later. Here, I suggest that while to begin with virtually all activity caused bondage, for reasons connected with the growing importance of the laity it eventually became necessary to differentiate the relative amount of bondage caused by different actions. 15
How does the Tattvārtha Sūtra's contention that the decisive instrumental factor in bondage is kasāya fit with the main teaching of the earliest canonical texts, namely, that to cause harm (himsā), by any means whatsoever, to any of the innumerable jīva which populate the physical world, is the binding sin par excellence?
At Tattvārtha Sūtra 7:13 (8), himsā is defined as pramattayogāt prāņavyaparopaņam, 'the destruction of life due to an act involving negligence'. 16 The Sarvārthasiddhi comments:
Pramāda connotes passion. The person actuated by passion is pramatta. The activity of such a person is pramatta-yoga.17
Thus the Sarvārthasiddhi differentiates between activity engendered by passion, which results in himsā, and
15 S.A. Jain echoes this historical and institutional divide when he remarks, 'From the real point of view, it is no doubt true that all activities are undesirable, as every kind of activity is the cause of influx and bondage. But from the empirical point of view there is a difference.' - p. 168, fn. 2.
16 Sukhlalji's trans., p. 267.
17 S.A. Jain's trans., pp. 196-197, of: pramādaḥ sakaṣāyatvam tadvānātmapariņāmaḥ pramattaḥ pramattasya yogaḥ pramattayogah.