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SAMVARA
39
48 minutes in the human and tiryancha kingdoms to 33 sāgaras (oceans)* of years in the highest heaven and the lowest hell. The shortest duration of life in hell is 10,000 years in the first hell, and the same is the shortest duration of deva-ayuḥ in the lowest heaven. There is no premature death in the celestial or nether regions, though the beings belonging to the human and tiryancha gatis may die before the exhaustion of their ayuḥ karma.
The causes of the principal nama karma prakṛitis, broadly speaking, resolve themselves into two general types, the subha (auspicious) and the asubha (inauspicious). Those of the first kind are pure holy thoughts, straightforwardness, honest behaviour, frankness, candour, fair-dealing, love of truth, and the like; while those of the second are trickery, dishonesty, perversion of truth, falsehood, cunning, keeping false weights and measures, preparing false accounts, making faces, mimicry, prejudice, fanaticism, merriment at the malformation of others, and all other actions of a similar type which imply a distorted frame of the body, or mind, or both.
The causes of the tirthamkara nāma karma prakriti, the holiest and most auspicious of all the subha energies of karma, are: (1) perfect
truction of some vital organ or organs. The distinction between these two kinds of causes of death lies in the fact that, while the association of the soul with its gross body is rendered impossible in consequence of the changes in the structure of the kärmāņa sarira in the one case, in the other it is due to the impairment or destruction of some vital organ of the outermost body itself. Hence, premature death is a possibility of experience where the outermost body is liable to be destroyed accidentally, but not where it enjoys an immunity from accidents, as is the case with the vaikriyaka body (of devas and residents of hells), the parts of which, as the Scripture shows, immediately jom again on being pierced or cut. Those who maintain that no one can die before his time, necessarily deny premature death, but they forget that the force which regulates the natural duration of life necessarily resides in the kārmāņa sarīra, while an accidental termination of life is the result of forces operating from without. The unconsumed residue of ayuḥ karma is, in cases of accidental death, dissipated at once.
It is also evident from the nature of the ayuḥ karma that the idea of a perpetuation of the physical life is a self-contradictory one. The ayuh karma is like a lump of sugar placed in a flowing channel of water, and is bound to be dissolved sooner or later. Nor is it possible to reinforce a force generated in a past life, for the nucleus of the past is like the effervescence of aerated water which cannot be augmented afresh by any
means.
*A very large number.
