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KARMA
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THE MECHANISM
TEXT OF THE SUTRAS
ATTRACTION TO KARMA
(Chapter 6 of the Tattvarthasutra)
(1) With the activities of our body, speech and mind we attract karma to our consciousness.
SUTRAS
(2) This attraction causes our consciousness and karma to interact (asrava).
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(3) We experience two modes of karma:
- positive karma (punya) - manifests as a subjectively agreeable feeling of life (positive experiences) and ideally will further our inner growth. It is caused by activities we generally regard as positive ('good', 'virtuous').
negative karma (paapa) - manifests as a subjectively disagreeable feeling of life (negative experiences) and obstructs our inner growth. It is caused by activities we generally regard as negative ('bad', 'evil').
(4) Karma affects us in two intensities:
- actions caused or influenced by negative passionate emotions (samparayika) prolong the cycle of our incarnations
actions not influenced by these negative emotions (iryapatha) have only transient, short-lived karmic effects.
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