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86: śramaņa, Vol 64, No. III, July-Sept. 2013
intersection or even synthesis between these two perspectives. While I have been noting throughout this paper some similarities, such as the fact of the paramāņu functioning like actants in forming skandha-assemblages, there is an immediate problem that must be addressed. How is it possible that a connection between Bennett and Jainism be made? As previously quoted, Bennett's vital materialism is ultimately material; she does not "posit a separate force,” which is something that Jainism does, in fact, do. So In engaging with vital materialism and Jainism, I come into a situation in which I am attempting to integrate or at least synthesize a vitalistic dualism and a vital-materialistic monism. How do we jump over this hurdle?
Bennett, interestingly enough, provides a potential solution. Drawing upon Deleuze and Guattari, who in turn are drawing upon philosopher of technology Gilbert Simondon, Bennett suggests, "such a material vitalism... doubtless exist everywhere but is ordinarily hidden or covered, rendered unrecognizable by the hylomorphic model."sl The hylomorphic model explains vitalism very accurately. It posits "some nonmaterial supplement with the power to transform mere matter into embodied life."52 The jiva-as-soul is always connected to matter and that matter in which it is associated becomes empowered, alive. But, what is interesting is that the hylomorphic model fails to see any interior elements of matter. Bennett intimates that "[t]he hylomorphic model is ignorant.... [to the fact] there exist 'variable intensive affects' and 'incipient qualities' of matter that 'external forms (can only] bring out and facilitate.”S3 Thus, even in the hylomorphic model, matter still has a vitality about it.
But what, exactly is this vitality that pudgala has that Jainism ignores? I want to argue that Jainism, in its pursuit of liberation (mokşa), becomes oblivious to matter's functional potentiality. In fact, the vibrancy of matter has been right under Jainism's nose all along: the curious ability of inanimate matter is to effect the ways in which the soul progresses. Indeed, karma theory becomes Jainism's best correspondence to vital materialism. The doctrine of karma within Jain philosophy helps address the fact, as Jyoti Jain explains, "the soul has been associated with matter from times immemorial."54 However, in comparison to other Indian philosophical traditions that discussed karma, Jains add a particularly material twist. As Padmanabh Jaini explains, "Most Indian systems employ the term karma to designate certain traces (vāsanā) or seeds (bija) left behind, as it were, by one's deeds. These residual factors will someday bear fruit in the sense of generating or conditioning experience, thus it is said, “Every action must eventuate in an appropriate reward or retribution to the perform of that action: this is karma. Jains adhere to the general outlines of this view but they stand alone in asserting unequivocally that karma is itself actual matter, rather than the sort of quasi-physical or psychological elements envisioned by other schools."$$
My quoting of Jaini at length drives the point that Jains do something unusual. They give matter an unusually significant weight in its interaction with the soul. The Jain conception of karma"is actually a form of subtle matter and the mechanism by which the bondage of the soul occurs, as well as the path to its eventual liberation.”56 To stress further, "karma is understood in Jainism to be a material substance which produces the universal law of cause and effect, which produces
