Sambodhi 2007 Vol 31

Author(s): J B Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 63

Vol. XXXI, 2007 PROF.G.C. PANDE'S CONTRIBUTION TO JAINA THOUGHT
57
of Karman, this is the process of action which generates Samsara. Right conduct is the reversal of this process, leading from bondage to freedom. It follows, thus, that action is a real complex of spiritual, mental and physical elements with a variables degree of freedom such that the complex may be tending towards its erosion or enhancement." In as far as the soul forgets its true nature and follows the directive of desires and passions, it moves downwards and outwards into the vortex of matter and into greater ignorance, bondage and suffering. At every level action remains the expression of the soul's energy and its power to cause a real change (Parinama) to itself and its environments. 12 When the soul acts through a passion-tainted mind, it gets involved in the obstructive accumulations of matter but it can start shedding this burden and move inwards and upwards.
Action is conceived as twofold, as motion (Parispanda) and as change of state (Parinama). 13 The soul in its state of freedom has an innate upward motion14 and a pure change of state in terms of the operation of its infinite qualities of power, knowledge and bliss. In the state of bondage the soul is the cause of its own good and evil mental transformations and the motions of the physical body are appropriated by it. The basic activity of the soul is its casual functioning in relation to its own states, the making of the soul of itself through its own functioning. 15 In all its psychic activity through which the soul determines itself, it functions through its own power and remains within a process of self-determination though its resultant accumulation of matter functions as a concomitant causal factor.16
At the same time, action effects a real change in the world. Although action simultaneously connects the soul and the world, it does not require that the soul should abandon its autonomy wholly. The reality of action and the autonomy of the soul in this regard, are thus fundamental Jaina tenets and form the basis of Jaina ethics. Although common sense does not doubt the everyday experience of the reality of free will and of human action affecting the environment, a number of schools and sects in the days of Mahavira and later questioned the truth of such assumptions and advocated naturalistic, deterministic and illusionistic views. The Jainas vigorously contested these.
Regarding the doctrine of Karman, Prof. Pande says that the general answer to the moral question accepted by all the non-materialistic schools was in terms of the law of Karman. The doctrine of Karman extended the causal law to the moral realm. It held that good and evil deeds have a necessary causal connection with the