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CHAPTER VIII THE JAINA CONCEPT OF KARMAN
According to the Jaina philosophy, Karma is regarded as a reality. It is the finest matter imaginable which a being attracts to itself due to certain impellent forces inherent in itself. This attraction is followed by assimilation and a change is brought about in the individuality of the living being. Karma is thus a kind of pent-up force or a compressed spring which will manifest itself sometime or other as a release into kinetic energy and produce some kind of experience. Karma is regarded as a foreign matter always obscuring some quality of the soul. The sooner it is worked out the better for the individual.
Considered, apart from an individual, Karma is nothing, for it is only in him that it finds the fullest expression, contributing to the mode, behaviour and activity of the individual. A man really generates karma when impelled by some inherent forces which give rise to some motive for his action. Unless there is some motive, there cannot be any karma. Hence, it is only under certain circumstances closely linked with motive that his action, word or thought may constitute karma.
The soul has an inherent capacity for emancipation but the soul passes through an infinite number of states while reaching from the lowest to the highest stage of spiritual development. These states have been classified into fourteen stages of spiritual development called guṇasthānas. Mithyatva dịşți guṇasthāna is the lowest stage of the state of perversity of attitude towards truth. At this stage the soul has the minimum possible degree of right vision. Sāsvādana Samyagdrsţi is the second stage of spiritual development (gunasthāna). The soul halts at this Second stage falling down from some higher stage of spiritual development. For example if at the end of the period of the dawn of the first enlightenment, there is the rise of the life long passions, the soul falls down from that enlightenment to this
