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Jaina Eschatology :: 193
be conceived to exist. How can we answer such a question?" So while we are thinking about the soul, we very often forget the contributions made by pudgala in the form of karmas, the physical body and the environmental factors. If we interchange the positions of the soul and the pudgala in our discussion, we, under the same habit, are very likely to forget the contributions made by the soul and will take consciousness as a function of matter. The negation of the contributions of pudgala in the hands of the spiritualists and the negation of the contributions of the soul in the hands of the materialists are the absolute views. The negation of the substances of the soul and matter is not the only form of absolutism, but to transfer the qualities of one to the other or to deny their mutual contributions are equally harmful forms of absolutism. The right situation is quite different from these onesided views. The mundane soul, the substratum of the psychical functions and phenomena, is really a joint product of the soul and the karma-pudgala.
Beginningless Association of the Soul and the Karmas
We shall be winding up our exposition of the karma theory in general with a discussion of the temporal side of the soul's relation with the karma. We have already seen that the relation between mind and body is at all possible because of the inherent power of distortion (vibhāva sakti) which functions only when there is a union of the soul and the karma-pudgala. So we can imagine that in the life of a mundane soul there was never a moment when it was not in conjunction with the karma-pudgala, or the mundane existence of the soul would have been terminated then and there. “The bondage of the jīva and the karma-pudgala is beginningless and self-established. The question "How was it effected? Who effected it? and where was it effected? are impossible like the flower of the sky.”Just as the jīva and
1. Brahmadeva: Dravyasamgraha-vrtti, p. 88 2. Rājamalla: Pañcādhyāyi, II, verse 54
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