Introduction to Jainsim

Author(s): Dewan Bahadur A B Lathe
Publisher: Jain Mitra Mandal

Page 30

JAINISM its connection with Karma from times without beginning. The connection breaks off only by the extirpation of the latter.. Insight and knowledge are the essences of the soul. Whatever is believed and known by the soul, attracts the soul with love or hatred. The development of this love or hatred is the bondage of Karma. Here comes our next subject.
Moksha, its nature and its path. It has been already explaiThe nature of ned to be freedom of the soul from every KarMoksha
ma. In the progress of the soul from the state of bondage to total freedom, there are successive changes in its state, called Gunasthanas, fourteen in number.
The first is Mithyatva Gunasthan, where the soul is compleThe Gunasthans tely immersed in all the Karmas. The soul does not know its true good. When by some cause it happens to have faith in the right path, it reaches the third or the fourth step of merit. On the fourth step, the faith is pure. .
On the third it is mixed with a certain amount of illusion and thus that step is called the step of mixed merit.
The soul sometimes falls back to the first step. On its way back, it passes the second step, called the Sasadan step.
Until the fifth step is ascended, faith alone is right, on reaching which the soul must also guide its conduct rightly. So a man who observes either one or all of the Vol's belonging to the eleven stages of laymanship is on this--the Sanyatasanya:step of merit.
Keeping the great Vow's of the ascetics, a man rises to the sixth step. Here the sins due to physical grossness, are alone committed by the soul.