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Because of these and many other reasons many followers of Jainism as well as other learned scholars and members of the Jaina clergy also started believing that Jainism is a purely inactionist and abstainist religion. They started holding the view that Jainism proscribed all forms of action as action meant karmic bondage and worldly transmigration.
However, a thorough study of Jaina scriptures reveals that Jainism is not a purely inactionist and abstainist religion. It also accepts action and activity as beneficial. The Ācārānga clearly mentions, in the following aphorism, that he (the knower of the true form of the soul) is a Spiritualist, Universalist, Actionist and a believer in the doctrine of karma"Se Āyāvādī Loyāvādi Kammāvādi Kiriyāvādi”
- Ācārānga sūtra, 1.1.7 It is so because it is the soul that acts and works through the mediums of the universe, body, senses, things, etc. Action and work are not possible in the absence of the soul. Therefore, for any spiritualist it is essential to know about action and work and the beneficial and the abandonable.
Every human being knows something, believes in something and does something. Thus, everyone is endowed with three kinds of powers - 1. Knowledge or the power of discretion, 2. Vision or belief or the power of volition and 3. Conduct or the power of action. The powers of knowledge, vision and conduct are there with every human being. It depends on him whether he uses or misuses these powers. To employ these powers in the enjoyment of sensory pleasures is to misuse them. For enjoying such pleasures only that a person indulges in all the sinful acts of violence, untruth, stealing, etc., and suffers miserably as a result. The reason for such mundane indulgence is to consider the body as the *self' and to believe that the whole existence of the 'self' is in the body only, and that sensory enjoyment is the only life. The body is destructible, perishable and transient, it is inert and made of insentient
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