Samayasara

Author(s): Kundkundacharya, J L Jaini
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

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SAMAYASARA.
sential and special attributes of the other. The one can never become the other. The Living can in no way possibly become tho non-Living. The non-Living can never become the Living. The Living and it alone has Life, Consciousness, Attention, Knowledge and therefore moral and spiritual responsibility. The non-Living is incapable of Life, Consciousness, Attention and Knowledge. The non-Living substance, Matter, alone has touch, taste, colour, etc., forming the infinite variety of the objects of the Universe. The non-Matter Soul can never have touch, taste, colour, etc., etc., the attributes of Matter and of it alone. Indeed, the Soul-Pure Soul-may be said to be the Monarch of Siddha Shila, the Abode of the Liberated, at the top of the Universe, and of the whole Universe and non-Universe only from the point of view of its Omniscience. The Vibration, the Delusion, the Colour and Mundane existence of the Universe is certainly Matter, and it alone. Is Matter not thus a full and true paraphrase of Satan, as the theological conception of Evil, Sin, Temptation, Delusion, Limitation, Weakness, Sorrow, etc., etc. - the ever-present and seemingly so powerful an antithesis of God? In the aspect of Jainism as insisted upon by the Great Saint Kunda-Kunda in the first century B. C., in this book, God versus Satan becomes Pure Soul versus Matter. God is Pure Soul. Satan is Pure Matter, the tempter, seducer, deluder and Jailor of Soul. Our mundane condition is a child of Matter. The deluded Soul is bound with Matter; but none-the-less this Matter with all its variety and attraction and might is absolutely incapable of becoming anything but Matter itself, or of making Soul anything but the Soul itself. Indeed here, the Holy Preceptor Kunda-Kunda rushes up to the highest heights of pure monism of Vedanta, but is not captured by it. In glorifying the Soul and in insisting upon its independence of and entire freedom from Matter, he never forgets in the least the equal independence of and entire freedom from Soul, of Matter. The two are there. Both are mighty in their separate, individual natures. It is only a deluded person, who mistakes their temporary union and resultant mundane life as altering the true inner nature of either of the two. The thing to remember is that all mundane life is Matter-born, Matter. All its variety is Matter. This should be clearly realised. The Soul is different and quite distinct from this beautiful net and coil and dance of Matter, Prakriti, of the Sámkhya School of Philosophy. The spectator may be engrossed in the dancer, but he is not the dancer. The King may be in prison; but the King is not the prison, nor is the prison the King. And neither can ever become the other. The
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