Jain Journal 1970 01

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

Page 68

176
JAIN JOURNAL
5. What do Jainas believe about karma and reincarnation ?
... the heredity of the soul instead of the heredity of the parents. True, this is karma alone. But we shall see that karma theory automatically calls for reincarnation to work out the kārmic heritage. Jainas do believe that the individual is the result of his past lives, karma, and that the individual soul is reborn into successive bodies, reincarnation. Our merit, and demerit, then, follow us from yesterday into today and tomorrow. It is our own unchecked clouds of ignorance, of greed, lust, and vanity, that obscure our Pure Souls and condemn them to body bondages in the shape of highly complex psychical and physical kārmic particles. There is not always a meritorious progression, there is often a demeritorious retrogression into lower conditions as aminal, vegetable, and mineral. In a simple restatement, the soul grows heavy with dirty karma and sinks into hells. Or it grows light with clean karma and rises to the top of the universe. Jainism always leaves a place for the personal free will so beloved by the West. Fruit of karmas can be changed from long to short, from strong to weak, by proper practices. Out of enlightened self-interest, then, the thinking Jaina works to free himself from the burden of deeds on his soul in order to escape the misery yet to come. His religion shows him the way in the form of a great spiritual stairway with steps for everybody, from the ascetic disciplined even beyond the realm of his conscious thoughts, to a simple houselady like me at the mercy of my gadabout mind.
6. Do Jainas meditate, that is, expand the mind into the macrocosm?
... meditation yes, expansion no. For the Jaina aim is not expansion into a universal self but withdrawal into the individual self. Jainas compare the mind to a lamp always burning. Its light must be purposefully directed toward a proper object. Jaina's proper object is the private Pure Self in you and me. To behold Pure Self is a massive task, for it means emancipation from the obscuring karmas of ugly thoughts and ugly deeds. Already we have said that the Jaina religion offers a spiritual stairway that you go up at your own speed. Example : Once a day, a simple householder meditates on the image in a temple built by others. Twice a day an advancing householder meditates on the classic Jaina formula of Friendship with all living beings, joy in the company of the learned, compassion for the unhappy, and indifference toward the wicked. While at every quiet moment the high householder pours his spiritual vitality into the Twelve Meditations of transitoriness, helplessness, transmigration, loneliness, distinctness, impurity, influx, stoppage, dissociation, the universe, rarity of enlightenment, and the