Jain Journal 1974 04

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

Page 36

174
II. Ajiva, or 'inertia', comprises objects or properties devoid of consciousness and life. These are vaguely classed, and generally incapable of interpretation. Their number is commonly set down as fourteen, the symbol of vitality. For Ajiva, as well as Jiva, can never be destroyed, though its form may change.
JAIN JOURNAL
III. Punya, or 'good', is whatever causes happiness to living beings. There are as many as forty-two kinds of goodness enumerated.
IV. Papa, or 'ill', is the cause of man's unhappiness; eighty-two kinds are enumerated.
V. Asrava is the source from which the evil acts of living beings proceed. There are five specified sources-the Indriya or organs of sense, the Kaşaya or passions, the Avrata or non-observance of positive commands, and the Yoga or attachment of the mind, speech, and body to any act; and last of all, the Kriya or acts, which are prompted in twenty-six different ways.
VI. Samvara is the cause by which acts are stored up or impeded. The ingenious Jaina can think of fifty-seven ways in which this can be done, e.g., by secrecy, endurance, gentleness.
VII. Nirjarā is the religious practice that destroys mortal impurities. It is a kind of penance, positive because repentant, and negative because of fasting and continence.
VIII. Bandha is the association of life with acts, as of milk with water, or fire with a red-hot iron.
IX. Mokşa is the last of the nine principles, and consists in the liberation of the spirit from the bonds of action. It amounts to exemption from the incidents of life, and from the necessity of being born again. It implies profound calm, as of a fire gone out, or of the setting of a star, or of the dying of a saint. 'It is not annihilation but increasing apathy which they (both Jaina and Buddhists) understand to be the extinction of their saints, and which they esteem to be supreme felicity.'
The means by which Mokşa is to be attained are called, as in the case of Buddhism, the three jewels-right faith, right knowledge, right conduct. Right faith is unswerving belief in the Jina, who was originally a man 'bound' like others, but who has attained by his own