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Chapter 4.3 (c)
PUNYA, PAAPA, AASRAVA. BANDHA, SAMVAR, NIRJARA AND MOKSA
Il moral systems teach ethics: 'good' or meritorious behaviour and the avoidance of 'wrong' actions, though judgement of what constitutes 'good" and "bad" depend upon arbitrary rules. From the Jain spiritual point of view, these rules, found in scripture, define merit as punya and demerit as paapa.
Our own experience tells us that good activities create feelings of happiness, satisfaction and joy, and their opposite breed feelings of misery, dissatisfaction and sorrow. Good activities are meritorious and bad activities are not, and a worldly being experiences feelings of pleasure and pain, depending upon these activities. Let us make it clear at this point that merit and demerit are both independent categories, and their results are experienced separately. There can be no appropriation, no addition or subtraction between them. One cannot obliterate demerit (or 'sin') through meritorious behaviour. Whatever sins or demerit one incurs, one will have to experience its consequences, and the same with merit. Merit results in auspicious karma, and demerit results in inauspicious karma. Both forms of karma are fine particles of matter, according to Jain belief, and their operation is described below. Nine causes of merit: Merit can be acquired by auspicious deeds: sympathy. kindness and service towards the poor and distressed, philanthropic deeds and appreciation of the nobility in individuals. Worldly beings can acquire merit by: 1. food: giving food to the hungry, to ascetics and the deserving; giving drinking water to those who are thirsty;
2. water: 3. shelter: 4. bed:
giving shelter and dwelling to the homeless and needy;
5. clothes: giving clothes to the needy;
6. thoughts: wishing for happiness for all and misery to no one;
7. speech:
8. body:
providing a bed or a place to sleep to those in need;
speaking the truth; saying kind words beneficial to others; serving others with physical ailments;
9. respect:
ascetics, the saintly, preceptors and tirthankaras.
respectful for elders and the virtuous, the meritorious,
teachers,
Religious observances and ethical and moral behaviour are meritorious, while indulgence in excessive sensual pleasure and unethical behaviour is demeritorious. Jain scriptures describe two kinds of merit:
'Merit-causing merit' (punyaanubandhi): this type of merit is virtuous in both realisation and result. It also paves the way to liberation.
⚫ 'Merit-causing demerit' (paapaanubandhi): this type of merit gives physical happiness at the time, but leads to immorality and, as a consequence, demerit For example, individuals may acquire worldly luxuries in this life through their previously acquired merit. Then, in addition, by acting virtuously in this life, performing philanthropic deeds, and by observing the spiritual path leading to liberation, they may acquire further merit, while enjoying the consequences of their previously acquired merit. This is 'merit-causing merit'.
Conversely, individuals may acquire the utmost physical happiness in this world as a result of previously acquired merit, but if they then lead sinful lives and
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