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LEŚYA-THE ETHICAL ASPECT OF AN
INDIVIDUAL
Dr. G. V. Tagare
The teachers of the path to moksa came to be known as MUNIS as distinguished from rşis. The Munis were a casteless class of people and were known since the Rgvedic times.
These Munis thought that the ethical aspect (character) of an individual (the moral effects of the acts of that individual) is reflected as a particular colour in the soul of that individual.
This paper proposes to trace the development of this concept since ancient times.
-Editor I was intrigued to learn that the late Mrs. Indira Gandhi used to see some coloured halo around people and that she lost this divine gift after her childhood. This reminded me of the LESYĀ concept of Jains which attributes different colours to souis according to the cumulative effect of their Karmans.
But do we have a similar concept among the followers of Brāhmaṇism and Buddhism as these three isms are the aspects or developments of one-viz. Indianism.
An unbiased student of ancient Indian philosophy who reads the original texts of older upanişads, Pali and Ardha-Magadbi canons finds that in ancient India there was probably one corpus of common philosophical concepts which developed different schools of thoughts or isms. Indianism believed in the Law of Causation (Karmavāda) and attributed inequality like sufferings of the pious people and prosperity of the wicked to the acts done by them in some birth. This is the Karmavāda. This theory automatically leads to the hypothesis of some kind of continuum, a persistent, permanent entity different from the body who receives the fruits or effects of the acts done by him in some previous birth. They thought that if the body and the soul were identical, the soul will be no more and the Law of Causation-He who sows must reap accordingly-would be null and void. Even the Buddhists who advocate Anattā have to admit some permanent principle called Väsanā as the continuum leading to the next birth.
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