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through all our daily activities. Different kinds of activity produce different kinds of karma which may ripen either immediately or after some time, or even in one or another of our subsequent existences.
And yet, Jain philosophy does not view the soul as hopelessly condemned to act and react upon the consequences of its earlier deeds, as if it were an automatic machine beyond all responsibility for its moral attitude and action. On the contrary, it clearly states that the individual is capable of free will. It emphatically deelares that the soul is invested with the freedom to exercise its own resolution.
Acting under its own free will, it can break the heaviest fetters of this Karma. It implies that to a considerable extent, by positive application of one's own free will, the soul is indeed the lord of its own fate.
The law of Karma should not be thought of as limiting human capacity. On the contrary, this dynamic truth should inspire a human being to mould and shape his future with positive thought and action.
Good deeds that spring from love, compassion, charity, hospitality and selfless service secure the basis of happiness; whereas bad or undesirable deeds will sow the seeds of future sorrow.
Life existed before this birth and will continue to do so after death. It is here, on this shore, and will be there, on the opposite shore, too. In between is the flow of birth and death. Because of karma and attachments the soul has to revolve in the cycle of birth and death.
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