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General Editorial
Jainism, being one of the oldest, very comprehensive and culturally rich religious systems of civilized humanity, is emphatically a positive religion which seeks to bring true happiness to its votaries by elevating them morally and enabling them to attain the highest spiritual perfection they are capable of. The ultimate aim is the attainment of liberation (moksha or nirvana) from the unceasing cycle of birth and death, which characterises the soul's mundane existence and is full of misery, pain and suffering. The main cause of this samsari state or mundane existence is the karmic boadage in which the soul is being held. Hence, the doctrine of karma, a unique feature and peculiarity of the Jaina system of thought, is the keystone of its metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics and philosophy. The entire sacred literature of the Jains is imbued with the interplay of the karma which is of two kinds, subjective and objective. The former represents the aberrations and perversions in the qualities natural of the pure soul, perversions such as delusion, attachment, aversion, hatred, anger, conceit, deceit, greed, lust, etc. The objective karma is a form of extremely subtle matter which is attracted by or flows into the soul and holds it in bondage when that soul happens to be afflicted by the said aberrations perversions. Every such bondage has its own duration with a certain intensity. On fruition the karma drops out. These material karmas are divided into eight principal kinds and one hundred and fortyeight subkinds. The restless mundane soul goes on indulging incessantly in mental, vocal and bodily activities that are actuated by one or more of those spiritual aberrations and perversions, and consequently it goes on binding itself with fresh karma every moment. The process goes on ad infinitum. It is only when a soul wakes up, becomes conscious of the divinity inherent in itself, and makes effort to free itself from the enthraldom of the karma that it launches upon the path of spiritual regeneration. Gradually by taking steps to stop the influx of fresh karmas and to annihilate the already bound ones, it finally becomes free of bondage and attains liberation or moksha, the state of purest and highest spiritual
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