Jain Journal 1972 07

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

Page 31

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mixed up with this matter, losing by contact with it either its real quality or the consciousness of that real quality.
JAIN JOURNAL
The old difficulty is beginning to creep in here, for the text does not help us in telling us which of the two is lost but suggests, somewhat unhappily, that the karmic matter is in itself a by-product of life; for, it says, that it is the psychical activities of life, or soul, which bring about the conditions of this matter, and the matter, once brought into existence, persists in the vicious circle of cause and effect: i.e., the emotions and desires of life, that has already formed an association with matter for their expression, have, in their very expressions, formed an effect, which, in its turn, will produce another cause with yet another effect, and so on, ad-infinitum.
But, if once we free ourselves from the word soul as understood in the Upanisadic sense, keeping it strictly to its use as evolving life, we come back to philosophic reasoning thus life takes for itself matter of expressions, or, more correctly to philosophical Jaina thesis, matter flows (asrava) into life; and this conjunction of life and matter has a definite effect on both.
The intrinsic qualities of life are lessened in the degree that they have been translated to matter; this effects the postulation of life in its completeness, and checks its evolution. Matter, it would appear, had no evolution it is a fixed and definite thing: life with its faculty of consciousness has either used it for a definite purpose, or come in contact with it accidentally.
The two aims of Jaina philosophy are to regulate, if not to check, this flowing in of karmic matter; and then by a process which it calls discrimination (viveka), prevent it getting settled round life.
It is this settling (bandha), or fixation of matter, which binds life, forcing it into karmic bodies-that is, bodies formed from karmic matter as opposed to static matter-when life loses more and more its volition, being, at last, completely bound by matter.
This binding may remain for ever: but, pure thought, which is the prelude to purification, has the power of loosing karmic particles, and finally shaking them off altogether when, the text says, the soul shines in all its original luminosity, grandeur and glory.