Illuminator of Jaina Tenets

Author(s): Tulsi Acharya
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 30

XXVÜï
INTRODUCTION
physical state that is a real, not merely symbolical, mark, a characteristic in the most literal sense, affecting the soul in its physical nature. As regards the age of this doctrine, R. Zimmermann observes : "Though the doctrine has been developed with a minuteness in detail, a care in classification, a definiteness in statement, which would do credit to the most methodical modern system, yet here again the question about its age remains, for the time being, an open one. At least one thousand years before the Christian era, the karman tenet is said to have been in vogue. This is of course supposed to be the lower limit, the higher one possibly lying much further back in antiquity. But the fact is significant that it cannot be shown where precisely and when a doctrine of such central position as that of the karman originated. That the fundamental idea of karman is part and parcel of the Jaina canon may be as readily accepted as the assumption that later writers have developed the theory in detail and expressed in technical terms what the elders implicitly had taught and believed. But if neither Jainism, nor Buddhism, nor Hinduism has got to show a definite date of origin for a doctrine that with all of them is a pivot of their beliefs, might it not be assumed that this doctrine of the karman in its various shades is an inheritance of old, a technical expression of the universally acknowledged law of moral retribution ?"?1
The soul is an ever-changing real by its own nature and, in the state of worldly existence, this change is determined by the nature of the karmic matter (karma-pudgala) that is associated with it. The nature of the associated karmic matter is determined by the nature of the passions (kaşāyas) of the soul and the nature of the passions is determined by the nature of the karmic matter. This mutual determination has no beginning in time. The beginninglessness is a perennial problem of philosophy that has baffled human reason. Matter influences soul and the soul influences matter. The Jaina philosopher accepts this process without any further thought about it. There is an intimate relationship between the sentient soul and the insentient matter, both of which are concrete reals. The concrete and material karman is responsible for the multifold predispositions and tendencies (physical and mental), the aggressive and sexual urges, and the possessive and other instincts that constitute the personality of the soul. It is not possible to know the exact nature and function of the material karman as to how it builds up
1 From the Foreward to The Doctrine of Karman in Jaina Philosophy by Helmuth
Von Glasenapp, Bombay, 1942.