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Karma Philosophy
289
activities of mind, speech and body, and they stick to it on account of the unctuousness of passions. When passions are destroyed, the material karmic particles are no doubt attracted to the soul, so long as the soul performs activities but they do not remain stuck to it, they get immediately dissociated from it after having simply touched it. Naturally one can raise a question: How can the material karmic particles get bound to or associated with the soul which itself is immaterial? Though the soul in its original nature is not material, it looks like a material thing, because it has been soiled by the impurities of attachment, aversion and delusion from time immemorial, and consequently it has been receiving into itself and binding with itself karmic material particles from the beginingless time. That is to say, even though immaterial by nature the soul has become akin to something material, since it has been associated with material karmic particles from the beginningless time; and it is as such that it receives into itself the material karmic particles. It is the soul that assumes different physical bodies, wanders in the transmigratory existence, suffers miseries, experiences pleasures and lives the life soiled with passions. How can all this trouble be without any cause? So, it is easy to understand that the cause of this mundane condition of the soul should also be there with the soul itself. And as this condition obtains from the beginningless time, its cause should also be there with the soul from the beginningless time. The cause-moha (delusion), avidya (nescience), māyā, vāsanā, karma, whatever name you may like to give-is associated with the soul from the beginningless time. This is the reason why the soul looks like a material thing, though it is not really material; and it is on account of this that the soul is entangled in the karmic bondage, karmic fruition, etc., and is caught in the cycle of birth and death.
Just as the faculty of knowledge is not material, yet it is veiled by liquor, etc., similarly, though the soul is not material, its mundane condition with karmic coverings can well be explained in the same manner.
The seed sown does not develop into a sprout instantly, but it takes time and develops into the sprout in due course. Liquor does not produce intoxicating influence as soon as it is drunk; it does so only after having entered into the blood-stream. Similarly, whatsoever material karmas are bound with soul through its activities, give their proper fruits to the soul at the end of particular fixed duration of time after the bondage has been effected. They remain dormant there in the soul so long as their time of fruition does not mature. To say that karma has risen means that
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