Religion and Culture of the Jains

Author(s): Jyoti Prasad Jain
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

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RELIGION & CULTURE OF THE JAINS
The karmic bondage is in the form of either merit (punya) or demerit (pāpa), accordingly as the passional states causing it are mild or strong, good or evil, auspicious or inauspicious. The fruit of the former is wordly happiness—healthy body, economic prosperity, name, fame, power, prestige, happy marital life, sincere friends, relations, education, capacity and will to do good to others, and so on. The fruit of demerit is the reverse. Influx and bondage, whether good or bad, constitute the source of embodied existence of the soul and of its worldly pleasure and pain, happiness and misery. But, when the individual soul realises the Truth and determines to end this condition and liberate itself, it first tries to curb and stop the influx of karman by disciplining and controlling its mental, vocal and bodily activities, and the spiritual vibrations caused by them. This is samvara. Then it, by strong will and conscious effort in the form of penance and austerities, gradually dissociates itself from karman. This partial dissociation and annihilation of karman is nirjarā. The two together constitute the path or process of liberation. The ultimate and complete libration from karman is mokşa, the supreme goal. States of Spiritual Development There are fourteen stages of spiritual development, called the guna-sthānas. The deluded, ignorant, world-engrossed soul is in the first stage. This delusion cum-ignorance (mithyātva) is the principal cause of the soul's saṁsāra and is its chief enemy. When such a soul happens to subdue and suppress for a time its mithyātva, owing to various internal and external factors, it rises to the fourth stage, which is that of samyaktva or clear vision, the antithesis of mithyātva. The suppressed mithyātva soon rises to the surface again and causes the downfall of the soul to the first, or any one of the intervening second and third, stages. It may also succeed in destroying mithyātva, partially or wholly. In the case of the first it can abide in the fourth stage for a considerable time, after which it falls