Science And Jain Philosophy

Author(s): Raksha J Shah, Abhijit Muni, Pooja Banthia
Publisher: International Conference on Science and Jain Philosophy

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UNIFIED MODERN TREATMENT OF THE EIGHT KARMIC COMPONENTS: MULA-KARMAPRAKRITI PROF. DR. KANTI V. MARDIA k.u.mardia@leeds.ac.uk
Prof. Dr. Kanti Mardia is a Jain scholar, a Senior Research Professor of Statistics at the Leeds Uniu. and Oxford Univ. He has many Jain published works to his credit including The Scientific Foundations of Jainism and, and recently launched the Album on his Jain thoughts with the Late Ravindra Jain (Bollywood Celebrity).
1.Introduction One of the fundamental concepts of Jain Science of Life is 'The soul exists in contamination with karmic matter and it longs to be purifiedFurther, the karmic matter gets differentiated into eight karmic components/karmas (Mula Karmaprakriti). The eight types in standard sequence ordering are shown in Table l and divided into two groups: the first four Ghatiyas (negatively influencing the soul quality) and the next four Aghatiyas (their presence does not interfere with Keual Gyan and are connected with embodiment). The major systematic treatment includes that of Davendra Suri's "Karmagranthas" and Nemichandra's "Gommatasara" (Karma-Kanda, NSi = the first stanza below); we refer below to Gommatasara.
2. New Modern Treatment There have been many different literal English translations of the above key words, leading to several variations. For example, Ghatiya and Aghatiya Karma are translated as Destructive and Non-destructive Karma (P.S. Jaini's Book), and as Harmful and Non-harmful (Dunda's Book). These do not capture their functional essence in terms of modern scientific and psychology thinking. Kachhara (2014, Scientific Explorations of Jain Doctrines) seems to have taken the first step towards projecting them into modern thinking and thus taken an out-of-the-box approach, namely, he uses Psychical for Ghatiya, and Biological and Physiological for Aghatiya. However, we start differently; first, we start translating Ghatiyas and Aghatiyas in a functional way, so their intrinsic properties are brought closer to their action as Ghatiyas is more active and observable than Aghatiyas (which is passive/latent) in a particular life-span. Thus, we equate the Ghatiyas as some form of quotient-blocking karma, whereas Aghatiya as coding karma. This nomenclature has the following additional advantages:
(i) that quotients are quantifiable as most of these karmas are in terms of pudgala and these are active in operation, whereas Codings are mostly collecting information for the next incarnation and are otherwise passive in one's life-time. (ii) Further, we extend the idea and translate eight of these karmas as in Table 1. 1. Emotional Quotient blocking (EQB); 2.Executive Quotient blocking (XQB); 3.Intelligence Quotient blocking (IQB): 4.Spiritual Quotient blocking (SAB); 5. Psyche coding (PC); 6. Bio coding (BC); 7.Actuarial coding (AC): 8.Environmental coding (EC).
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