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KARMA : THE MATERIAL BASIS..
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entirely contrary to this because for them, there is nothing spiritual and whatever looks spiritual is only an epiphenomė. non of the material. The Cārvākas, the Yogācāras and the Advaitins advocate absolute identity while the Nyāya-Vaiseșika and the Sānkhya-Yoga advocate absolute difference. The Jainas have tried to work out a modus-vivendi, i.e. a kind of identityin-difference. The material and the spiritual are causally related, for there cannot be any existence without the co-operation of the two. The Dravya-karma and the Bhāva-karma are not contradictory but are supplementary,
Karma and Soul
The Jaina position about nature of soul (Jiva) is completely unambiguous, But when the soul is completely free, potentially divine and innately perfect, it is natural to ask how and why it gets infected with such defects as are found in any empirical Jīya. This problem is really crucial one for Indian metaphysics. The Jaina reply is that the inherent fourfold-infinities of the Jiva are vitiated by something outside the soul, called karma. But we may ask why they should be any vitiation at all? This they attribute to nescience and further hold that the pre-condition of nescience are prepared by karmas. This is obviously circular reasoning. But it may not be proper to jump to this conclusion because the Jaina position on this point is full of several complexities and refinements. They hold that both nescience and karma are beginningless. The postulate of nescience has to be accepted because without it karma cannot be explained, while karmas work as the actual, material cover of knowledge, and lead to strenghen nescience. This is their relationship as exhibited in the lives of empirical Jivas. But if we ask what is their original relationship in the life of the first Jīva, the question is simply insoluble, because, logically speaking, for the Jainas, their relationship is beginningless, i.e., not acceptable in terms of time. Infact self also is above space, time and causation, To explain why it has been caught in the snares of worldly
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