Jain Journal 1969 07

Author(s): Jain Bhawan Publication
Publisher: Jain Bhawan Publication

Page 45

36
JAIN JOURNAL
procuring something agreeable or detaching something disagreeable and pain on getting something disagreeable or losing something agreeable. In both the ways as mentioned above, feeling is an artificial characteristic born of its dependence on others. And dependence as such is the symbol of misery, because in its root lies avidyā or self-identity with the 'other'. That is why it is repeatedly insisted on in the scriptures that worldly pleasure is essentially full of suffering, for it is not the natural experience of soul's own.22 Deluding karma, the fourth one, corrupts the soul's outlook and attitude. Under the pressure of it the soul believes in the theories and dieties inconsistent with the religion and the sayings of the omniscient, and acts accordingly. Thus the above four types of karmas drag the soul down from its original natural abode, and prove themselves detrimental (ghāti) to the natural leanings of the soul. The rest of the four karmas are, though unlike the former ones, not detrimental (aghāti) to the soul's nature, yet they prepare such types of worldly cage that the soul cannot break it up before its set limit of time. They pertain roughly to the age, body, family and one's environmental conditions. All of these future modifications rest potentially in the system of karmas, and thus the individual goes on enjoying or suffering the fruits of his acquired deeds.
In this system spiritual and material energies blend together and become the occupants of the same space-points (eka-kşetrāvagāhi). Thus an organism comes into existence. Its each minutest part of protoplasm is constituted both by spiritual and material energy. Through the system of multiple material atoms one undivided spirit pervades. That is why Kunda Kunda claims that the soul is of the size of its material body which it adopts from time to time through the influx (āsrava) and the retention (bandha) of karmas, just as a padma-rāga jewel when dipped in water pervades the whole water through its own lustre. 23
The soul, however, adapts itself in the smaller or larger bodies on account of its inherent capacity of doing so. The Jaina has named that capacity as agurulaghutva. Through this particular capacity the soul remains the same throughout its larger or smaller organisms. It is, factually, included in the nature of the soul. Forgetting this aspect of the soul's nature, even a great intellectual like Sankara polemized the Jaina position with apparently no success.24 For the Jaina does not maintain, like Descartes, that the entities of the soul and the body remain quite distinct throughout, having only the contact of each other at the
22 Panc., 2-239, 250, 321, 324. 23 Pky., 33. 24 B.S.B., 2-2-34 to 36.