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JAIN JOURNAL
root of all sufferings in samsāra. These passions account for bandha (the fettering and smothening of jiva (life-monad) by karmic matter. Every thought and action entails an accumulation of fresh karmic substance. It (the karmic substance) communicates colours (lesya) to the life monad ; that is to say leśyā indicates the character of the life monad the whiter the colour is the brighter is the prospect of reaching the life's goal i.e. the release. "The process of life itself consumes the karmic substance, burning it up like fuel, but at the same time attracts fresh material to the burning centre of vital operations. Thus life monad is reinfected by karma;"28 the fine particles of matter that bind the soul. It mingles with particles of karma like water with milk or like fire with iron in a red hot, glowing iron ball. “New seeds of future fruits pour in. Two contradictory yet exactly complementary processes are kept, in this way, in operation. The seeds, the karmic materials are being exhausted rapidly all the time through the unconscious as well as the conscious actions of the psychosomatic system and yet through those identical actions the karmic storage bins are being continually re-stocked. Hence, the conflagration that is one's life goes crackling on.” Man experiences happiness or misery in life as fruits of karma. Every man/woman is responsible for his/her own karma and it accounts for his/her rebirth in this world again and again in different forms.
Jainism regards every man and woman capable of coming out of this vicious tangle by means of his/her individual efforts and not by means of any divine grace as divine grace cannot lead to mokşa, the release. It is only by individual exertion, by observing a code of morality and devotion to austerities, some times of a rigorous type, that one can attain mokşa i.e. the release. It believes that every one has in his or her the super qualities for attaining the release and it is the karmic inflection of the life monad that overshadows the super qualities in one. When the fresh influx of the karmic inflection in the life monad is stopped (samvara) and when the life monad sheds away or eliminates the karmic matter that is already in it (nirjar ū)“by means of cleaning austerities, burning it out with the internal heat of ascetic practices (tapas) as by a sweating cure”29 the union of jiva and ajiva30 in the life monad is separated and it attains mokşa.
28 Zimmer. H., Ibid., p. 249. 29 Zimmer, H., Ibid., p. 274. 30 Jiva means the life monad and ajiva means all that is not the life monad. There are
five categories of ajiva. These are : pudgala (matter), dharma (medium of motion), adhrma (medium of rest), akasa (space) and kala (time).
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