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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
476
Atman and Moksa
remains in bondage as long as the Karma does not come to an end, and so long as an individual is in bondage the subtle body exists as it holds the Karma in it.
S'amkara maintains that bondage is caused by Nescience or ignorance (avidyā), i.e., wrong conception about the soul. Nescience consists in superimposing upon the soul those attributes which do not belong to it. It consists in concealing the real nature of the Brahman and in showing it to be something else. S'amkara says --" This superimposition thus defined, learned men consider to be Nescience (avi. dyā), and the ascertainment of the true nature of that which is (the Self) by means of the discrimination of that (which is superimposed upon the Self), they call knowledge (vidyā)." He makes his idea of nescience more clear in the following passage “The conception that the body and other things contained in the sphere of the Not-Self are our Self, constitutes Nescience; from it there spring desires with regard to whatever promotes the well-being of the body on so on, and aversion with regard to whatever tends to injure it; there further arise fear and confusion when we observe anything threatening to destroy it."? Thus, nescience consists in ignorance of the real nature of the soul and in wrongly supposing it to be the body, the senses, the mind, the buddhi or of all other things which are other than it. Superimposition of the object over the subject
i s'amkara (Com.) on Vedānta Sūtras. Tr. Thibaut, 1.1, Vol. I, p. 6.
2 Ibid. 1.3.2, Vol. 1, p. 157,
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