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42
THE PRACTICAL DHARMA
children, preventing one's servants and dependents from following the path of true dharma, and many other similar acts of omission and commission are also causes which engender the antarāya kariu. Virya or the fifth kind of antarāya is also caused by foods which augment laziness and foster lethargy of mind, or body, or both.
The above is a fairly complete list of the specific causes of the different kinds of karmas, and although it is possible to carry on the process of analysis further in the domain of causalty, it will serve no useful purpose to analyse these causes still further. It may, however, be pointed out here that many of the actions described as the causes of the different kinds of karmas might, at first sight, appear to have little or no causal connection with the energies they are described as engendering, but a careful study of the motives from which they proceed and of the accompanying attitude, or condition, of the soul would at once reveal them to be true to their description. For instance, the reader may well ask what is the causal connection between the act of marrying one's children at an early age and the resultant energy of the antarāya karma, but if he will take into consideration the state of the mind of the parent who acts in this manner, he will soon discover that the latter has no idea of the evil consequences which result from the uniting of little ones in the bonds of matrimony, and is purely guided by what he considers to be conducive to his own pleasure. Thoughtlessness and selfishness, thus, are the causes which lie at the back of this evil practice, and these, undoubtedly, are the signs of soul's negativity, the chief cause of all kinds of weakness. Besides this the form of pleasure which one can possibly derive from marrying one's child at an early age, being purely of a sensual type, and consisting, as it does, in the giving of feasts, the performance of nautch and the like, clearly points to the fact that the mind is completely taken up with the gratification of the senses.
We thus have soul's negativity coupled with the desire for sensegratification; and these combined lead to an influx of material particles which easily find a lodgment in, and tend to clog up, certain parts of the kārmāņa śarīra upon which depend the organising and functioning of all bodily organs. Now, since the idea and actual sight of little children playing the role of married people is pregnant with the sug
