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Tattva, Reality
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commentators sometimes add the other in brackets. However, one may also say that jiva is, in certain texts and contexts, a more generic term, indicating rather the animate, incarnate being. Atman, the Self, would accordingly be more precisely that potentiality and possibility inherent in human nature of knowing the life-principle and its inmost essence and, by knowing and itself becoming identified with this knowledge, of travelling towards its own plenitude.4
Before considering jiva, it is important to take note of this point: jiva, in whatever guise or place, always possesses in potentiality the ananta-catustayas, that is, the four capacities that the siddha, the perfected one, possesses in plenitude: infinite vision, infinite knowledge, infinite bliss, infinite power. It is simply through the association of the jiva with matter-body, through activities resulting in karman, that these perfections are to varying degrees affected, veiled. We now proceed to follow the more important doctrinal texts, which describe both that which is inherent or intrinsic to jiva (ātman) and also the path which leads to its dissociation from karmic matter, to the destruction of this same karmic matter and to its becoming in full measure that which it is.
It is useful first of all to state clearly and briefly the properties of
jiva:
The jiva (is living), conscious, sormless, capable of action, [it has] the same dimension as the body it inhabits (which is determined by its nāma-karman), it reaps (the fruits both good and bad of its karman). (it is) subject to sarsāra, [it is potentially) siddha, [it possesses the ability to] move upwards in a natural manner (after reaching Liberation].5
texts, the word paramātman to denote the perfectly realised ātman, that of the siddha.
4 In order to avoid over-simplification in the realm of the imperceptible we must retain in our minds both terms, preserving, of course, in cach quotation the one chosen by the author.
jivo uvaogamao amutti katta sadehaparimāņo
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