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Bliss as an Attribute of the Soul:: 163
emotions, pleasure and pain have no meaning."1 Nemicandra observes; "Because in the omniscient lord attachment, aversion, and knowledge depending on senses are destroyed, he does not suffer from the sense generated pleasure or pain caused by the operation of sātā-vedaniya (pleasuregenerting karma) or asātāvedaniya (pain-generating karma)."2 Then the problem is whether all the types of karmas or the destructive ones only are responsible for the distortion of the faculty of feeling.
Vedaniya and Mohaniya Karmas together Generate Pleasure and Pain
Akalanka says: "The sātā-vedaniya type of karma brings about the attainment of the bodily and the mental pleasures in the states of life like the celestial one by its operation. That whose fruition is of the form of many kinds of pain is due to the asātā vedaniya."3 This clearly means that the vedaniya type of karma plays a very important part in the generation of the phenomenon of feeling. The omniscient lord has not been able to shed off the vedaniya type of karma. Then why should we not presume the existence of painful or pleasurable feeling in the omniscient lord? The position is explained by making the function of the vedaniya karma dependent upon that of the other karmas specially the mohaniya (deluding) one. The identity of the vedaniya karma has been explained as "the vedanīya karma disturbs the jiva like a destructive type of karma on account of the power of the mohaniya karma." The feeling determining karma in itself is not very destructive to the faculty of bliss, but, when supported by the deluding karma it works like a destructive kind of karma producing the feelings of pain and pleasure. We are to find out some reason for the strange identity of
1. M.L. Mehta: Jaina Psychology, p. 114
2. Nemicandra: Gommaṭasara (Karmakāṇḍa), verse 273
3. Akalanka: Rājavārtika, 8.81 and 2
4. Nemicandra: Gommaṭasāra (Karmakāṇḍa), verse 19
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