Studies in Jainism

Author(s): Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta
Publisher: Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture Culcutta

Page 72

SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF JAINISM
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identity of the self with others is the primal source of the principle of non-violence.
KARMA From the metaphysical doctrine of 'equality of selves', Jainism deduced also the spiritual law of Karma, which holds that all physical, mental, and other distinctions between one self and another are only adventitious, that is, are due to karma and not intrinsic. It follows from this that the least developed being, such as the vegetable organism, can develop into a human being, and can, by spiritual evolution, attain absolute freedom from bondage, and, conversely, a human being may return to the stage of a vegetable organism. The only determinant of the nature of the self, of its higher or lower stage of existence, as well as of its absolute freedom, is karma, also called sanskara (trace), or vāsanā (predisposition). The intrinsic equality of all selves is fully manifested when there is complete absence of karma.
If all the selves are intrinsically equal, why then is there this mutual inequality between them? Why again does the same self pass through different states at different moments? Jainism answers that, while the state of a self, no doubt, is in accordance with the nature of its karma, the self is, at the same time, free to do or not to do a good or a bad act; it can serve a good or a bad purpose according to its will. and it creates its own future as well as the present. The law of Karma maintains that the present is created in accordance with the past and that the future is created on the basis of the present. The mutual relation of the past, present, and future is determined by it. This is the foundation of the doctrine of rebirth.
Karma, in Reality, consists of ignorance and the passions of attachment and hatred. The absence of the true cognition of the intrinsic clifferent between the self and the not-self is ignorance. known as darśanamoha (perverted attitude) in Jainism. This ignorance has been called avidya in such systems as the Samkhya and the Buddhist. The predispositions and defilernents which originate on account of the perverted assessment, due to the influence