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Jaina Eschatology :: 217
transformed into those of the other. The same is the limitation when the karmas are said to determine the physiology and the environment connected with a jīva. The karmas become simply an occasion or a nimitta kāraṇa in the determination of the psychic, physiological and environmental variations. Under this limitations karma-determinism can mean simply an agreement between the potency of the karmas and the consequent variations in the above mentioned three spheres. Our problem is to discern whether this type of karmadeterminism can be consistently maintatined.
Samantabhadra objects to absolute karma-determinism as “If things are accomplished solely by the fate (or karmas), then it cannot be maintained that fate can also be determined by effort (puruşārtha). If fate is determined by another fate then emancipation becomes impossible and effort, fruitless." There is a basic inconsistency in holding the absolute karmadeterminism, it will allow no scope for effort. We have already seen that there is no perfect co-ordination between the operation of karmas and the environment. The fact of the atrophy of karmas is an obstruction in the way of absolute karma-determinism. Every karma requires a suitable ground for its realization; and failing to get such a ground it sheds off fruitless. This atrophy is threefold according to the three classes of karmas. It is possible that the psychological accomplishment is there, but the physiological and the environmental factors are suffering in some way. In such a situation the psychical karmas will not realize their end fully, karmas both in their operative and destructivesubsidential states suffer in the above manner. All this leads to the conclusion that karma determinism in its absolute form is not a tenable theory.
We cannot go to the other extreme of absolute indeterminism and hold that the will can be perfectly independent of the karmic influence. The absolutism of indeterminism directly leads to the futility of the karma doctrine. If karmas have no bearing on the behaviour of
1. Samantabhadra: Āptamimāṁsā, verse 88
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