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SUTRAS
HOW TO DISSOLVE KARMA
they hope. That's how they picture spiritual progress. Nice, comfortable, easy, safe.
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And so they never get going themselves. Whatever they do, wherever they go, they are just passing time, expecting an experience that will never arrive. They wait to be lifted from that big mass of people around them that certainly is not on their level. They smile at you and think: 'Why can't he see, how far advanced I am?'
What these poor people don't realize is that their pride, their lack of commitment, their very idea of that 'recreational spiritual path' bars them from any progress. They don't know that all they expect, all they project is exactly what they are getting: A casual 'spiritual' stroll through nice, natural scenery - maybe accompanied by some similarly attuned souls, basking in all kinds of good vibrations, - but - nothing more.
The Tattvarthasutra offers an entirely different path. It alerts us to highly private, obstructive emotions we usually sweep under the carpet, it makes us aware of attachments and prejudices that stop us from becoming the magnificent being we feel so deeply within us. And it advises us how to dissolve these obstacles, - how to arrange the familiar components of our life so shrewdly that they will make us expand into a far vaster, exciting, compassionate, blissful and wide-open universe. And - as we progress in this direction and more and more understanding opens up, we'd never even think of using our insights for empty party talk.
The attachment of new karmic matter to our interactive karmic field is the main factor that keeps our consciousness within the narrow limits karma weaves around it. This new attachment often takes place against all our will and intentions. It happens, even if we have an ardent desire for a new orientation of life.
Jain Education International
Certainly, sincere desire to end karmic restrictions is essential for reaching this freedom, but we also know that our intention alone will never start this process. Real progress only happens when we also
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