Harmless Soul

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

Page 89

Umāsvāti's Jainism ' 75 which are thought to generate it.)
As P.S. Jaini puts it:
By undertaking the aparigrahavrata, a Jaina layman systematically reduces his tendencies to fall into such passions; thus he protects his soul from increased karmic entanglement and lays the groundwork for complete nonattachment, the path of the mendicant. 73
How does this change in attitude towards the householder relate to the development of the kaşāya doctrine? The following hypothesis is offered.
In the early karma doctrine, only one train of events is necessary for karmic bondage: parigraha or lobha (including the other passions) causes himsā, and himsā causes bondage. (It should be noted that parigraha is by no means the only way in which himsā can be brought about, but it is seen as being the major threat to the monk, and the one most difficult to counteract.) In the developed doctrine, presented by Umāsvāti, for bondage to take place (i.e. for karma to attach itself to the jīva) there have to be two separate occurrences: 1) there has to be yoga ('activity') which causes an influx of karmic matter, and 2) there has to be kaşāya which causes that karmic matter to adhere to the jīva. Thus 'greed' (lobha or parigraha) - the passion subsuming all others in the earliest texts -, which was previously seen as being synonymous with a particular way of life (the householder's), becomes in the later doctrine (under the technical term 'kaṣāya') an internal process or attitude. From being the defining characteristic of a particular way or condition of life, it comes to denote anattitude towards life; the emphasis is shifted from the external to the internal, from the social to the individual. In effect, renunciation is partially internalised.
73 JPP p. 178.