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THE BASIC POSTULATE OF THE THEORY
leads to fatalism and pessimism 13 The doctrine of grace is indeed a disgrace to the idea of man as the maker of his own destiny. This loss of ethical autonomy takes away the very basis of our moral life and perhaps is generated by a false belief that the potency of karma is also destroyed with the destruction of the human body.
The Jaina theory of karma might be accused of plac'ng the destiny of man in the hands of ruthless law and not in those of a merciful God, who might be pursuaded easily to improve it.
Mr. Sinclair Stevenson makes a similar projection when she says that "the belief in karma and transmigration kills all sympathy and human kindness for sufferers, since any pain a man endures is only the wages he has earned in a previous birth."14 But in view of tremendous inequalities pervading the
13 Prof. P. M. Bhambāni raises this question : " if all creation is
grounded on God's volition, how can any non-voluntary action be at all ? ” and replies " God being the Universal Consciousness, the epithet of voluntary and non-voluntary cannot be implied to Him." However, I can say that if God is only conscious, his karma cannot be a result of choice but when God said 'I am one, let me be many there is act of choice. To this a Višistādvaitin may say that God has in Him both' the aspects-Ciia and Acita and so on. (See Proceedings of Indian Philosophical Congress (Hyderabad), 1939, Symposium on "Karma and Fatalism" in which Profs. P. M. Bhambani, M. A. Venkata Rao & R. Ramānujachári had participated. Prof. S. Süryanārain Sāstri also contributed an article (Advaitic Approach) in the same Proceedings). Dr. R. V. De Smet holds that the theory of Acquinas on God as the universal cause of everything in the evolving universe is strikingly parallel with the view of Sajkara." (See Madras Seminar
on Karma & Rebirth, 1965 and Brahma-Sutra (S.B.) II. 1.34). 14 S. Stevenson, The Heart of Jainism, p. 163, cp. Dr. R. V. De Smet
“The Law of Karma, when it is given (as by Sankara and Aquinas) its correct and subordinate place within a general theory of the total causation of the universe (with or without temporal beginning) by Brahman or God, ceases to be an iron law and to give rise to impossible antinomies, but to be retained in its core of reasonable:ess with its connotations of justice and ethical government of the world” --See Madras Seminar on Karma & Rebirth, 1965.
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