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330
CHAPTER SEVEN why are you angered with karma ? Homage to you, Blessed One, whose nature is undiscernible, greater than the great, possessing the four infinities of siddhas."
When he had completed this hymn of praise, Väsava became silent, and the Blessed One, Suvidhi Svāmin, delivered a sermon.
Sermon on the āsyavas (79–134) “Certainly this existence is the depository of a burden of endless pain, and its source is āsrava, as a snake is the source of poison. Since people's actions of mind, speech, and body, activities, karma good and bad, flow, they are called asravas (channels). The mind dwelling on friendliness, etc., 484 begets karma of a pure nature; but subjected to passions and sense-objects produces impure. Truthful speech based on knowledge of the scriptures produces good karma ; the reverse (falsehood) must be recognized as a source of bad. A person accumulates good by a wellcontrolled body ; but bad by a body engaged in continual undertakings that cause destruction to life. Passions, sense-objects, activities, negligence, and lack of self-control, wrong belief, painful and cruel meditation-these are causes of bad karma. Whatever is the source of collecting karmic matter, that is called āsrava ; and karmas are eight with the divisions, knowledge-obscuring, etc. Whatever obstruction, contradiction, slander, destruction, injury 165 and envy there are of knowledge and belief, and also of their sources, these are äsravas of knowledge- and beliefobscuring karma.
Worship of the gods, attendance on gurus, gifts to suitable persons, compassion, forbearance, control of passion, partial control, involuntary destruction of karma, purity, and penance without right knowledge are äsravas of good-feeling karma. Pain, sorrow, injury, torment,
484 81. See I, n. 56.
485 86. One of my MSS. supports the "āghātao of the ed. ; the other has oāpāya'. This (apāya) seems to me unquestionably better.
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