Harmless Soul

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

Page 78

64
Harmless Souls
supposition that 'passion' or 'intention' can to some extent be controlled by someone who goes about his worldly business (i.e. it is a matter of attitude), whereas restraint of physical activity demands a particular kind of 'extraworldly' ascetic discipline. And as will now be made clear, the practice of monks and nuns remains unaffected by this internalisation, which effectively comes to function as a means of giving the laity a theoretical foothold on the path to salvation.
2.4 'Activity' in the Tattvärtha Sutra
According to Tattvārtha Sūtra 6:7, jīva (what is sentient, i.e. the soul) and ajīva (what is insentient) constitute the adhikaraṇāḥ - the 'substrata' - of influx; in other words, the causes of influx. Or as the Sarvārthasiddhi puts it, being adhikarana is 'the condition of being the instruments of injury and so on', and thus the condition of being instrumental in the influx of binding karmic matter.53 Commenting on this, Sukhlalji says that 'both jiva and ajīva are called adhikarana - that is to say, a means, implement or weapon of karmic bondage'.54 This seems to make 'karmic bondage' the active principle which needs the adhikarana in order to express itself, rather than the jiva being the active principle. But by the very fact of being available for āsrava, the jīva is in a sense instrumental in its own bondage. Karmic bondage can only become 'active' if the jiva behaves in certain ways (enumerated at Tattvärtha Sūtra 6:8), and it is in this sense that the jiva is the 'substratum' - a reading which is compatible with the usual meaning of adhikaraṇa as 'that in which anything happens'.
The ways in which a jīva can cause injury are numbered as 108, as follows:
The substratum of the living is planning to commit violence,
53 S.A Jain's trans., p. 172, of: himsādyupakaraṇabhāva. 54 Sukhlalji's commentary on TS, p. 239.