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WHAT IS KARMA ?
Meaning of karma
Every living being, from the minutest to the highest embodied one, is the centre of innumerable potential and actual energies which are called karmas in the Jaina Philosophy. The word 'karma' has an interesting history. In the Vedas it means the performance of sacrifices, offering of oblations to nature gods and manes of deceased ancestors. Karma-mārga—the path of works—is nothing but ritualistic Brahmanism. In the words of Sir Monier Williams "Not even Jewish literature contains so many words relating to sacrifice as the literature of the Brahmins. The due presentation of sacrifical offerings formed the very kernel of all religious service. Hymn, praise and prayer, preaching, teaching, and repetition of the sacred words of Scripture were only subsidiary to this act. Every man throughout his whole life rested his whole hopes on continually offering oblations of some kind to the gods; and the burning of his body at death was held to be the last offering of himself in fire (antyești)”. In later literature, karma, in addition to the above meaning, also meant duty and good and bad actions. In the Jaina literature we have a fuller meaning. It is any energy which an embodied being generates-be it vital, mental, or moral and which keeps him in the mundane world, the saṁsāra. Karma, in short, is the whole sāṁsārika make-up of an embodied being. It is entirely divested of the sacrifice idea. Karmas which keep the individual in a backward condition are knowli as pāpx; those which help him in advancement are punya. The Jaina philosophy gives a deta:led enumeration of karmas, and explains how they are attracted (āsrava), how they are assimilated with the individual (bandha), how their inflow can be stopped (sarvara), how they can be entirely worked out
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