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JAINISM
hour of death.” The truth of a religion is still true whether there are any who follow it or not.
The subject of this book is the solution afforded by Jainism to the problem of life; and, to make a
GENERAL STATEMENT OF THE SUBJECT,
we may say: we and all other beings living on this earth are from one point of view uncreate, self-existent, immortal, individual souls, alive with feeling and consciousness, and never to lose our own identity (jiva). We are each of us responsible to others for our conduct towards them. We are responsible to ourselves for our own condition. In whatever degree we are ignorant, in pain, unhappy, unkind, cruel, or weak, it is because, since birth and ever previously in the infinite past, we are and have been acquiring and incorporating into ourselves (asrava, bandha), by the attraction and assimilation of subtle, unseen, though real physical matter (pudgala),-energies (karma) which clog the natural wisdom, knowledge, blissfulness, love, compassion, and strength of the soul, and which excite us to unnatural action.
Until we leave off (samvara, nirjara) this unnatural kind of life, by refusing to obey impulses and promptings which by our own conscience and understanding we believe to be wrong, and which are only the blind automatic operation of those unnatural though sometimes powerful energies in us (karmas), the peace of mind which is said to be inseparable from a life of rectitude, and the final pure natural state of existence in everlasting blissfulness (moksha) must remain nothing more than matters of faith and hearsay.
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