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168 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY emphasizes the latter at the expense of the former. It permits for instance the combination of the two modes of discipline in one or more directions, thus making it possible for the spiritually weak to rise to the level of the monk by easy steps. To give an example, a person while continuing as a layman may follow the higher ideal in regard to food alone. The difference between the training of a layman and that of an ascetic here is thus not one of kind but only one of degree.
The aim of life is to get oneself disentangled from karma. Like the generality of Indian systems, Jainism also believes in the soul's transmigration, but its conception of karma, the governing principle of transmigration, is unlike that of any other. It is conceived here as being material and permeating the jivas through and through and weighing them down to the mundane level. 'As heat can unite with iron and water with milk, so karma unites with the soul; and the soul so united with karma is called a soul in bondage.' As in so much of Hindu thought, here also the ideal lies beyond good and evil, so that virtue as well as vice is believed to lead to bondage, though the way in which each binds is different. If through proper self-discipline all karma is worked out and there arises 'the full blaze of omniscience' in the jiva, it becomes free. When at last it escapes at death from the bondage of the body, it rises until it reaches the top of the universe described above as lokākāsa; and there it rests in peaceful bliss for ever. It may not care for worldly affairs thereafter, but it is certainly not without its own influence, for it will serve ever afterwards as an example of achieved ideal to those that are still struggling towards it. During the period intervening between enlightenment and actual attainment of godhead-for all liberated souls are godsthe enlightened jiva dwells apart from fresh karmic influence. An enlightened person may lead an active life, but his activity does not taint him as even unselfish activity, according to Jainism, does in the case of others. During this interval the devotee, as in Buddhism, is termed an arhant3 (p. 152), and he becomes a siddha or 'the perfected' 1 OJ. p. xxxi.
SDS. P. 40. 3 Jainism is sometimes described as the arhat-creed (ärhata-darsana).
