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Essentials of Jaina Philosophy
the pure Bliss. But on account of the coverings of the above-mentioned karmas, its original nature is not manifested. This results in soul's transmigratory wanderings and their attendant miseries and troubles.
Now let us describe eight basic types of karma:
1. Knowledge-covering karma, as its name suggests, covers soul's faculty of knowledge. The stronger this karma, the greater is the covering of the faculty of knowledge. The lesser or weaker this karma, the more developed is the intellect. The degree of intellect is in direct proportion of the degree of subsidence or elimination of this karma. Therefore, the intellectual diversity noticed in the world is due to the different degrees of subsidence or elimination of the karmic matter of this type. When the karmic matter of this type is totally eliminated from the soul, faculty of knowledge is manifested in its fullness or perfection this is what we
—
call omniscience.
2. Vision-covering karma, as its name suggests, covers the soul's faculty of vision. There is not much difference between knowledge and vision. The initial cognition that grasps the object concerned in a generic form is given the name 'vision' ('darśana'). It is like a cognition that a man has of an object when he sees it from a distance. And the cognition which, arising in the wake of vision, grasps that very object in a specific form is given the name 'knowledge' ('jñāna'). Sleep, blindness, deafness, etc. are the fruits of this karma.
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3. Feeling-producing karma, as its name suggests, produces everchanging experiences of happiness and unhappiness through sense-organs and mind. Accordingly it has two sub-types, viz. the one producing experiences of happiness alone and the other producing experiences of unhappiness
alone.
4. Deluding karma generates delusion in the soul with regard to wife, son, friend and the things it likes. This karma generates attachment and aversion towards worldly objects. Blinded by delusion and its attendant attachment and aversion the soul loses its sense of discrimination, it cannot differentiate the good from the evil, the auspicious acts from the inauspicious ones. It is like a man who is under the influence of liquor. The drunken man loses all his power of understanding the situation and as a result becomes infatuated and goes astray and does such despising and disgusting acts as he would not have done if he were not infatuated by liquor. Similarly, a living being greatly infected with delusion is unable to understand the reality as it is and under the sway of nescience and
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