Neuroscience and Karma

Author(s): Jethalal S Zaveri, Mahendramuni
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

Page 41

Karma and Neuroscience
thus terminate the cycles of rebirth. An important facet of karmaphala (fruition of karman) is the bondage of new karman. The chief causative factors of the bondage are Kasaya' (which includes Nokaşāya2 and Yoga and both factors are the result or effect of the fruition of the existing karman. While 'attitude and behavior' are the ultimate effects of the past, it is also the cause of the new bondage. Behavior is constituted by threefold activities - mental, vocal and muscular or thought, speech and bodily action. However, both speech and bodily actions are themselves regulated by thought (at least so far as humans are concerned). The speech is always preceded by thought and it is the human brain that produces language, love and aggression, pleasure and pain, happiness and grief, and much more positively come through the brain though not from it. We can thus study both the cause and the effect of karman by a critical study of (analyzing) how the brain works and controls the attitude and behavior of a person and regulates his life. 2. Neuroscience
Today several disciplines are involved in the study and research of Brain and its functions. Some of the prominent ones are :
natomists who study pathways in the brain - Physiologists who record and study its electrical responses - Biochemists who investigate its endless chemical activities
- Clinical neurologists and neurosurgeons who tell us much about its health and disease
- Psychologists of various sorts who assess the performances, attitude and behavior of men and animals under different conditions.
- Psychiatrists who treat mental illnesses.
And the list is by no means complete. To organize the great mass of information that is being collected from experiments and observations by all these and other disciplines, the scientists agreed to give a name, a general label to the entire study and called it 'Neuroscience'.
1. Kasāya : Passions -- anger, arrogance, deciet and greed. 2. Nokasāya : Quasi-passions - joy, etc. (see Prologue I). 3. Yoga : Threefold action — thought, speech and physical activity.