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INTRODUCTION TO JAINISM
still linked with you. Imagine that you say something on television that is not true; at once you deceive perhaps millions of people, and they will in their turn, in their confidence and honesty perhaps, act on what you have said. You are karmically responsible and the result will turn on you in the form perhaps of unpleasant circumstances or even in an unpleasant rebirth due to the deceit you have committed. Therefore Jains take great care in what they say and do.
As we will show further on in this chapter, Jains have elaborated the concept of karma in greater detail than any other thought system on earth.
Compassion?
Why does karma exist at all? Those who want to believe in an almighty, all-good creative God have great difficulty explaining why He did omit the creation of the causes of suffering. But even if we, like the Jains and the Buddhists, do not believe in a creative God at all, it remains a difficult question why a universe which shows so much love and compassion and beauty – we all carry these feelings in our own heart - shelters suffering. Every religion gives a central place to love and compassion. These are divine faculties. Allah is called the All-Merciful. The Tibetans pray 10 Chenrezig, the Compassionate Being who is the essence of all celestial Buddhas. The god of the Mayas, called the Plumed Serpent, taught his people compassion as a counterforce against religious bloodshed. We could list many other examples from sacred literature and popular beliefs. The Jains regard karma as “dust” that is attracted, which partly obscures the body-bound soul as soon as it “vibrates," i.e. every time it has a thought, feeling or emotion. But the essence of the soul is purity and compassion. How can obscuring thoughts ever arise from such a soul? “Karma is both merciful and just. Mercy and (universal) justice are only opposite poles of a single whole; and mercy without justice is not possible in the operations of karma,” says modern theosophical literature.
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