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Essentials of Jaina Philosophy
sition ‘sam' and a verbal root 'ur'. The verbal root 'vr' prefixed with the preposition 'sam yields the meaning 'to stop, to prevent'. Highly spiritual internal states of the soul, causing control and restraint of the mental, vocal and bodily activities, effect the stoppage of the inflow of karmic matter. So, even those spiritual internal states as also the controlled and restrained threefold activities themselves are regarded as the stoppage of the inflow of karmic matter. The Sanskrit term 'āsrava' is derived from the verbal root 's?' meaning 'to ooze', prefixed with the preposition 'ã'. Hence, it means the inflow of the karmic matter into the soul, or the activities through which this inflow takes place. And the prevention of the inflow is called 'saħvara'. The higher the spiritual stage, the thinner is the inflow of karmic matter. The greater the cessation of the inflow of karmic matter, the higher is the spiritual plane attained by the soul.
BONDAGE OF THE KARMIC MATTER WITH SOUL (BANDHA) Bondage is of the nature of interpenetration of karmic matter and soul like the interpenetration of milk and water in a mixture of the two. Karmic matter is present everywhere in the universe. The entire universe is thickly stuffed with it. There are numerous groupings of matter. From among them the grouping that has the capacity to undergo transformation of the form of karma is attracted towards itself by the soul through its threefold activities and then bound to itself by it. The karmic matter gets stuck to the soul due to its unctuousness of attachment, aversion and delusion.
At this juncture there arises a question: why should a naturally 'dry' (passionless), i.e., pure soul come to acquire an adventitious unctuousness of the passions of attachment and aversion? To find a satisfactory answer to this question it is necessary to ponder over it deeply and sharply. We cannot say that the soul had acquired this unctuousness at a certain point of time. It is because this involves the admission of the view that before the acquisition of the unctuousness the soul was in its pure and pristine natural state. But then there is no reason why a naturally pure, i.e., 'dry' (passionless) soul should come to acquire the adventitious unctuousness of passions. If we accept the possibility of a naturally pure, i.e., 'dry' (passionless) soul starting at some point of time to assume impure states of unctuousness of passions then why even the liberated souls who have attained perfect purity be not again infected with the impurities of attachment and aversion? How can we avert the undesirable contingency of the
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