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EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS
from the empirical point of view it is seen to be possessed of passions (kaṣāyas) due to the influence of nescience (avidya) which is as much beginningless as the jiva itself. Both jīva and avidya being beginningless, it is not easy to say when the jīva came in contact with avidya. In fact their contact is also beginningless.1 The passions are helped by what is known as yoga, vibrations of body, speech and mind. The Tattvärtha-Sutra points to these two, viz., kaṣāyas and yoga as the main causes of bondage. It is now evident how closely the analysis of emotions and feelings are related to the Jaina analysis of the purpose of human existence. Analysis of feeling is easier since it can be explained in terms of bodily sensations than an analysis of emotion which relates to the mind. In the Jaina terminology vedaniya-karma is responsible for sense feeling and mohaniya-karma or delusion-producing karma is responsible for emotions.
The Jaina philosophers point out that at the basis of all feeling is the element of passion because of which we have the pleasant and the unpleasant sensations. That is, the Jaina maintains a subjectivist point of view in regard to pleasure and pain. There is nothing which is considered as pleasure by all, nor as pain by everyone. The Uttaradhyayana-Sutra maintains that it is the passionate man who feels the bodily and mental sensations of pleasure and pain. Neither indifference nor emotion is the direct outcome of pleasure. It is because of love and hate that man experiences pleasure and pain. No one object in the world has the power to cause any feeling-pleasurable or painful to a man who is determined to be indifferent towards them.
3
99
A positive illustration of the state of non-attachment towards pleasure and pain that the Jaina posits as the end of human life is found in his concept of the omniscient (kevala-jñānin). Our reference earlier (though in an epistemological context) to the Jaina view regarding the obstructive role that the sense organs and the mind play in human life has already indicated that the state of perfection (which is also synonymous with omniscience) is characterized by man's remaining unaffected by pleasure and pain. The Tattvärtha-Sutra refers to the omniscient as one who is free from
1 U. Misra, op. cit., p. 262
2 Tattvärtha-Sutra, VIII. 1
3 Uttaradhyayana-Sūtra, XXXII, 100-106
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