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CHAPTER V
THE DOCTRINE OF KARMA IN JAINA
PHILOSOPHY
I. "O Gautama, just as a sprout has a seed for its hetu, as there is a hetu for happiness and misery; since it is a karya. That hetu is the karman." We find in this life persons, having the same means for enjoying happiness, do not get the same type of happiness. Misery comes in unequal ways. This difference cannot be without any hetu which is not seen. This very unseen hetu is karman.' Misery, in this life, is too much of a fact to be ignored. It is also true that there is abundant inequality in the status and experiences of individual men, which is inexplicable by our empirical methods of enquiry. Good men suffer and the evil prosper like the green banyan trees. It is necessary to explain this provident inequality in the status and development of individuals.
Attempts have been made to refer this inequality to man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree. Others have denied the existence of evil and the consequent inequality; still others would like us to think of this world as training ground for perfection. But life is not a pleasure garden and God a sort of a Santa Claus whose main duty is to please his creatures. It is necessary to find a solution on the basis of autonomous nature of man and his responsibility to shape his own destiny. The Indian thought has found it in the doctrine of Karma.
II. The doctrine of Karma is one of the most significant tenets of Indian thought. It has profoundly influenced the life and thought of the people in India. It has become the logical prius of all Indian thought's It is the basal presupposition of
1. Viseṣāvas yakabhāṣya: Gaṇadharavāda 1611-12 and commentary, 2. Ibid.
3. Cave (Sidney): Living Religions of the East, p. 31.
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