Notes on Modern Jainism

Author(s): Mrs Sinclair Stevenson
Publisher: Oxford

Page 69

KARMA.
57
(3) kāpota Les'ā (1918 211): this feeling leads to thoughts, evil indeed, but less black than in the first and second case.
The Jaina, it will be noticed, appear to consider the stronghold of evil to lie in the thoughts as much as in the will,
There are three good emotions :
(1) Tejo Les'ā calon 9211), the remover of evil thoughts, as darkness is banished by light.
(2) Padma Les'ā (44 211). As a lotus flower expands, with the rays of the sun, so Tejo Les'ā, coming into the mind, expands it, and this, the next higher emotion, is born.
(3) Sukla Les'ā ( $1464 2211). Under the influence of this emotion the mind itself becomes a sun, and there is no dark corner left which could contain evil thoughts.
The Jaina illustrate the six Les'ā by a parable ( more illuminating to the Eastern than the Western mind of six men who wish to eat mangoes.* The first man under the influence of Krisna Les'ā wishes to cut down the whole tree to eat one mango; the man swayed by Nila Les'ã thinks of cutting off a big branch ; Kāpota Les'ā induces the third to think of cutting off a smaller branch.
The better influence of Tejo Les'ā suggests to its possessor to pluck off the unripe fruit ; Padma Les'ā induces the fifth to propose plucking off those ready to fall; but
* This is such a favourite parable that pictures of it are frequently
found in Jaina books; the point of it being that, according to Jaina belief, the life, which pervades the branches and unripe fruit, is in the ripe fruit concentrated in the stone, to which no injury is done by eating the fruit.