Laghutattvasphota

Author(s): Amrutchandracharya, Padmanabh S Jaini, Dalsukh Malvania, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

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the immeasurable glories of such a being, emphasizing time and again that his knowledge of objects neither contaminates his omniscience nor produces divisions in his unitary consciousness.
But even this stage is not yet perfect, for the soul must still overcome the 'secondary' (aghatiyā, literally, non-destructive as compared to the ghatiyā) karmas which produce the body (nama-karma), social status (gotra-karma), feelings (vedaniya-karma) and the duration of life (ayu-karma). The Jaina maintains that the duration of one's present lifetime is invariably fixed in the immediately preceding one. Although premature death is conceivable for an ordinary person, it is ruled out in the case of the Jina, for he has totally destroyed the kaşayas, the only factor which could bring this about. The other three karmas, especially the vedaniya (which produces feelings of happiness and unhappiness), are always accummulated by the soul in quantities larger than can be brought to maturity in a single lifetime. The Jina too has surplus quantities of such karmic matter (dravya-karma); had he not attained to the twelfth guṇa-sthāna, it would have matured in subsequent births, but in the absence of a new birth it must be exhausted before his death. In other words, the quantity of the other three karmas must be reduced to a level corresponding to that of the remaining ayu-karma, which is unalterable. This is accomplished by an extremely curious yogic process called samudghāta (destruction by bursting forth); it is a sort of involuntary action which takes place but once, occupping only eight moments, a short time before prior to the Jina's death.
The kevali-samudghata is appropriately named since it is performed only by a kevalin. This doctrine is probably unique to Jainism; it casts light upon their theories of karma and jiva, demonstrating the absolute materiality of the dravya-karma and the inevitability of its effects on even the omniscient soul. The karmas must first be brought to maturity and their effects experienced by the soul; only then can they reach a state of exhaustion. There is no escape from these effects through any super-human agency, nor is there a teleological possibility, such as that proposed by the Samkhya, of the karmas themselves departing from the soul after "perceiving" its "disinterest".33 The Jaina explains the samudghata process with the example of a wet cloth which dries slowly when folded, but quickly when it is spread out. The karmic matter (dravya-karma) can be forced into maturity by the soul through a similar process. Without leaving the substratum of the body, the soul stretches self vertically and horizontally and fills up the whole universe (lokaākāśa), 'mixing' as it were, its 'space-points' (pradeśas) with those of the karmic matter. Thus it forces the matter out by a sort of thinning process.3+ The soul then contracts its space-points into the body, having reduced the level of the three karmas to that of the remaining ayu-karma.