________________
13
causality and change In this situation while Vedanta adopted the position of Śāśvatavāda and Akriyāvāda and took the paradox to be an ultimate contradiction, the Buddhists adopted the position of Kşanıkavāda and what they held to be Kriyāvāda The replacement of durable substances by causally determined processes meant that there is action, but there is no agent, just as there are experiences but no persistent experiencer The causal and moral laws become coordinations between different states in a process and both become equally impersonal From the Jaina point of view this wholesale denial of the soul itself is neither true to experience and reason nor consistent with the requirements of morality which can correlate actions and consequences only in terms of a stable agent
The Jaina answer to the paradox of action is itself dialectical To be is to change and yet persist20 and the soul is as much subject to this law as matter The soul and matter are directly the causes of their own changes and are in this sense free from heteronomous determination or interaction with something absolutely distinct 30 Nevertheless they have a beginningless association and their changes provide occasions for the changes of each other In this sense just as reality involves change as well as persistence, action involves autonomy as well as heteronomy The distinction of two levels, Vyavahāra-naya and Niścaya-naya, is accepted but both are accepted as real The soul's association with matter is as real as its dissociation in liberation While wrong action strengthens this bondage, right action tends towards liberation In the state of liberation this duality of right and wrong action is ended and replaced by a kind of action which does not produce any Karmic results.
The Jaina analysis of action, thus, while holding action to be real, seeks to provide a valuational gradation for it At the psychophysical level, the level of what is called Yoga, action is distinguished by its motivation which may be pure or impure This depending on whether it is tainted by the Kaśāyas or not is the level of Vyavahara-naya At this level the psychic activity of the soul attracts matter and absorbs it into the body, senses and
