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moral law is nothing but the natural form of action or Caritra Cantra is action and being in accordance with nature Since the nature of things and of its ownself is obscured for the soul by ignorance, knowledge is a sine qua non of right action Since the force of wrong action in the past has also to be countered, right knowledge needs to be strengthened by right willing and effort against contrary habits and instincts
Of the nine padārthas, sin and virtue are held to be reducible to äsrava and bandha which are psychospiritual relations and processes Āsrava and Bandha are only the Vaibhavika paryāyas of the Jiva while Samvara, Nu jarā and Moksa are its syabhava paryāya Soul and matter are the only two substantial reals AU the other categories, Padāi thas or Tattvas, are only their relations and changes produced by such relations One might go further and say that the soul is the only moral and spiritual category When the soul acts independently by its own nature, it acts rightly When it acts under the influence of matter, it acts wrongly and dependently and enters that self-perpetuating cycle of evil which is called Samsāra Judgments about right and wrong, good and evil, are thus reducible to judgements about the states of the soul and their dynamics
It will be clear that Jaina ethics does not convert the moral realm of values, norms and obligations into an independent and autonomous realm with irreducible objects, neither material nor spiritual, but apprehended as they are in a unique mode of awareness Nor does it reduce moral categories to disguises worn by material facts and natural processes It reduces moral phenomena to the workings and states of the soul in so far as it struggles with its bondage and seeks to be itself Jaina ethics, thus, is squarely grounded on Jaina metaphysics It rejects the inevitability and ultimacy of sensuous values and does not accept ordinary common sense or social opinion as the basis of moral judgement. Jaina ethics is not the abstraction of an actual social ethics Nor does Jaina ethics have a theological basis as in the case of the Vedic tradition The contrast with Buddhism, again, is worth mentioning For the Buddhists right and wrong are dispositions of
