Jainism in Bihar

Author(s): P C Roy Choudhary
Publisher: P C Roy Choudhary Patna

Page 25

in. Two contradictory yet exactly complementary processes are kept, in this way, in operation. The seeds, the karmic materials, are being exhausted rapidly all the time through the unconscious as well as the conscious action of the psychosomatic system, and yet through those identical action the karmic storage bins are continually restocked. Hence the conflagration that is one's life goes crackling on."
Regarding the Jaina way of life Zimmer observes “The Jaina monk does not permit himself to respond in any manner whatsoever to the events that afflict his person or take place within his ken. He subjects his physique and psyche to a terrific training in ascetic aloofness and actually becomes un-assailably indifferent to pleasure and pain, and to all objects, whether desirable, repugnant, or even dangerous. An incessant cleansing process is kept in operation, a severe and difficult physical and mental discipline of interior concentration, which burns up with its heat (tapas) the karmic seeds already present. Thus the life-monad gradually clears, and attains its intrinsic crystal clarity, while the actor obdurately refuses to participate any longer in the play on the stage of life. His goal is to achieve a state of intentional psychic paralysis. Rejecting every kind of mask and holding with a sublime stubboraness to his invincible state of non-cooperation, finally he wins. The busy host of players who fill the universe, still enchanted by their roles and eager to go on contending with each other for the limelight changing masks and lines from life to life, enacting all the sufferings, achievements, and surprises of their biographies, simply turn from him and let him go. He has escaped. So far as the world is concerned, he is an useless fool.
The final state to which the Jaina monk thus wins is termed, as we have said Kaivalya, “isolation", "completeness through integration"--which means absolute release ; for when every particle of karmic substance has been burnt out,