Book Title: Scientific Foundations Of Jainism
Author(s): K V Mardia
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Pvt Ltd

View full book text
Previous | Next

Page 47
________________ CYCLES OF BIRTH AND DEATH (AXIOM 3) Axiom 3: “The karmic bondage leads the soul through the states of exisiences (cycles).” 4.1 THE AXIOM IN AXIOM 2 we concentrated only on the static situation of living beings through one life-span rather than the dynamic situation of various life cycles. The question arises as to whether there exists a cycle of birth and death. This axiom assumes that there is such a cycle. On death the soul is set free of physical body and is thus ready to move on under its own propulsion. From Axiom 2 it is quite clear that the amount of karmic matter will be responsible for the next placement on the life-axis. However, the following questions do arise: What is meaningfully transported from one life to the next? ience can allow such a transportation? 4.2 THE KARMIC COMPONENTS To answer the above questions, we assume that the karmic matter gets differentiated into eight specific types by the activities of the contaminated soul. We call these types the karmic components. We will view the karmic components as negative forces arising from the karmic matter and perverted energy element of the soul. Recall the four basic elements of the soul: bliss, energy, knowledge and perception and its intrinsic freedom-longing catalyst. Figure 4.1 sketches the state of the soul at a fixed point in time. On the positive scale we have infinite bliss, energy, knowledge and perception. Underlying these elements is the strong freedom-longing catalyst. On the negative side corresponding to bliss, we have a component which defiles this element. This component will be called the Bliss-Defiling karmic component; we will write it as the "a-component". The acomponent has an Insight-Defiling sub-component (a,) and a Conduct-Defiling sub-component (az) which we will write as the a

Loading...

Page Navigation
1 ... 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146