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Chapter - 10
Samayasāra
The conscious substance (jīva) is not the subject of physical states and vice versa. Thus, there is no subject-object, (kartā-karma) relation between the two substances. What then is the nature of their relation? The answer to this question is given in verses 10.5 and 10.6.
Causality is a relation of determination where the determinant is called the cause and the determinatum is called the effect. According to the law of causation, at least two categories of causal agents (kāraṇa) are essential to bring about an effect, viz. (i) internal or material cause (upādāna kāraṇa) and (ii) external or auxiliary cause (nimitta kāraṇa). A single agent cannot produce any effect unless it is accompanied by the other. A seed, for instance, is the material cause of the sprout but it cannot produce a sprout by itself, unless it is associated with a number of auxiliary factors such as water, soil etc. In the case of yarn and linen (or clay and pot), the latter is the product and the former is its material cause, that is, it is the yarn that becomes linen and the clay that becomes pot. But the yarn cannot become the linen, not a clod of clay a pot by itself. A weaver must weave the yarn into the linen and a potter must turn the clay into a pot, using adequate equipment such as a loom or a wheel. The weaver, the loom, the potter and the wheel, besides the talent of each of the two artisans comprise the essential auxiliary cause, collectively known as nimitta kāraṇa. Similarly, the extreme proximity of the soul and its psychic states are essential auxiliary causes for the modification of the karmic matter into various species of karma; karmic matter being the material clause and becoming karma. Conversely, the soul needs the proximity of the karmic matter and various processes and states of karma (rise, fruition, subsidence etc.) to produce different psychic states although the soul alone is the material cause of these states. Thus there is a clearcut distinction between the material cause and the auxiliary cause.
In the worldly state of existence, called samsāra, birth and death are characteristics of an organism. A living organism is neither a body nor a soul nor yet composite of the two and the problem of the relation between the two has always remained a complex one. Simply expressed, the existence of a living organism is brought about by the unification of two different substances-matter and jīva or soul-one physical and the other non physical and psychical.
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