Jain Moral Doctrine

Author(s): Harisatya Bhattacharya
Publisher: Jain Sahitya Vikas Mandal

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JAIN MORAL DOCTRINE
darśana; the last form of wrong belief is Ajñāna or utter ignorance consisting in an inability to distinguish right from wrong.
The second subjective ground for the psychical bondage is Avirati. It consists in non-restraint of the five senses and of the internal organ of mind and in want of a compassionate attitude towards all classes of animals.
Pramāda or carelessness is another phenomenon which weakens the soul and prepares it for its bondage. Sleep (nidrā), affection (sneha) and the careless permissions to the five senses as well as to the four passions to have their full play, are forms of the Pramāda. Another mode of the Pramāda consists in Kathās or careless talks about food, women, politics and scandalous matters. These also make one's self weak.
It is the Kaşāyas or the four-fold passions of anger, greed, deceitfulness and conceit which are important Bandha-hetus or causes of psychical bondage.
The last but not the least of the soul's infirmities which bring about its bondage is of course the Yoga, which, as described before, is a proneness on the part of the self to welcome foreign elements into it, a psychical inclinatory vibration in correspondence with peculiar activities of one's mind, body and speech.
Thus the Asrava introduces foreign elements into the soul and if the soul is already affected and weakened by its own subjective states of wrong belief, passions, non-restraint etc. those foreign elements find a fruitful soil and take deep roots in the nature of the self and get the mastery of it, bringing about its bondage.
We have considered the acts and attitudes which bring about the inflow of foreign forces and activities into the self as well as those which complete its bondage. The Asraya-inducing and Bandha-causing actions are the negative aspect of morality,-indicating, as they do, the thoughts and practices which one wishing to tread the moral path is to begin by avoiding. There can be no question about this that those acts which invite in one's self knowledge-obscuring, faith-suppressing, deluding and enervating influences must be avoided. There is further no doubting that acts which cause unpleasant feelings, birth in a low family, a bad bodily structure, parts or constituents or a miserable status, would be avoided by all, more or less automatically. But if the state of one's ordinary existence is felt to be far from desirable and if the quest for
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