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Jaina Philosophy and Religion
it has matured to give its fruit to the concerned soul. Every karma is called "karma' on account of its bondage with the soul. And once it is bound with the soul, it must get dissociated from it at some time. This is certain. Having risen to give its fruit, the karma makes the soul experience its fruit fully, and then gets automatically dissociated from the soul. This is a case of effective rise (vipäkodaya) . But there is also such a state of karma, where even though karma rises, it does not cause the soul to experience its fruit and even without causing this experience, it gets dissociated from the soul. Such a rise of karma, as characterized by the absence of the experience of its fruit, is called nominal rise--that is, rise. only of the karmic particles (pradeśodaya). If the soul were to experience the greatly accumulated karmas through the effective rise (vipäkodaya) alone, then the attainment of liberation would become impossible. By the force of great spiritual efforts and austerities, many aggregates of karmas get dissociated from the soul in this way, that is, by mere nominal rise. And at last, when the huge store-house of the accumulated karmas becomes empty, the liberation is attained.'
1. Each karma is experienced without fail. This rule is rightly inexorable. But this rule
is posited from the standpoint of the experience of karmic particles, and not from the standpoint of the experience of the flavour. It is not a rule that the flavour of each and every karma is invariably experienced by the soul. It is possible that karmic particles get dissociated from the soul through the experience of the karmic particles alone without the experience of flavour. Prasannacandra and others had bound karmas, the fruits of which were infernal existence and infernal miseries. But by the force of auspicious mental states, they destroyed their flavour and experienced simply the flavourless material karmic particles of those karmas. This is the only reason why they had not to experience the tortures of hell, even though they had bound the karmas whose fruits were infernal existence and infernal tortures. It is because the experience of pleasure and pain is caused only by the effective rise, that is, by the rise of flavour (vipäkodaya). (See Viseșāvašyakabhāsya-vrtti on gathā 2049) If it is a rule that bound karmic particles get dissociated from the soul by effective rise alone and not by any other method, then no soul can attain liberation. It is so because the soul that attains liberation in that very birth does have karmas--in their dormant state-accumulated through innumerable births, and as they are bound on account of various mental states, they are the causes of future births in innumerable life-species like infernal being, human being, etc. So, if these karmas are to be dissociated from the soul by effective rise alone, then in the last birth the soul should experience various births. But that is impossible, because in the human birth, the soul cannot experience many births like a hellish birth, a celestial birth, etc. And if the different karmas which are the causes of births in different life-species cause the soul to experience their fruits in proper births taken one by one, then the soul
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