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SOME JAINA CANONICAL SOTRAS
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world of attachment and bondage. According to Mahavira the painful condition of the self is brought about by one's own action and not by any other cause (fate, chance, creator or the like). Individually a man is born, individually he dies, individually he falls and individually he rises. His passions, consciousness, intellect, perceptions and impressions belong to the individual exclusively. All living beings owe their present form of existence to their own karma. The sinners cannot annihilate any work by new work, the pious annihilate their work by abstention from work.1 Karma consists of acts, intentional and unintentional, that produce effects on the nature of soul. Soul is susceptible to the influences of karma. The categories of merit and demerit comprehend all acts which keep the soul bound to the circle of births and deaths. Nirjara consists in the wearing out of accumulated effects of karma on the soul by the practice of austerities (tapasă nirjară ca). In short Mahavira's great message to mankind is that birth is nothing, that caste is nothing, and that karma is everything, and on the destruction of karma the future happiness depends. There are four kinds of destructive karma 2 (ghatiyakarma), which retain the soul in mundane existence. Jainism as a practical religion teaches us to purge ourselves of impurities arising from karma.
In Hinduism we find that God inflicts punishment for evil karma (action) whereas in Jainism karma accumulates energy and automatically works it off without any outside intervention. The Hindus think of karma as formless while Jains think of it as having form. According to the Pali Nikayas an ancient householder teacher of India was the first expounder of the doctrine of action. (Majjhima Nikaya, I, p. 483). The Jaina Sutrakritānga speaks of various types of Kriyavada or karmavāda then current in India (1. 6. 27; 1. 10. 17). Buddhism as a form of karmavāda is distinguished
1 Sūtrakṛtānga, I, 12, 15. In Buddhism karma is defined as volition expressed in action (cetanaham bhikkhave kammam vadāmi-Atthasālinī, pp. 88ff.). An action is no action until the will is manifested in conduct. Karma means consciousness of good and bad, merit and demerit (kammam nāma kusalākusalacetana-Visuddhimagga, II, p. 614). Karma produces consequence, retribution is born of action, action is the cause of rebirth, in this way the world continues. No action passes from the past life to the present nor from the present to the futuro (Visuddhimagga, II, p. 603). Regarding the relationship between karma (action) and vipaka (consequence), there is no action in consequence and there is no consequence in action. Each of thein by itself is void. An action is void of its consequence which comes through action and consequence comes into existence on account of action (Visuddhimagga, II, p. 603).
2 B. C. Law, Mahavira: His Life and Teachings, p. 104.
