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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailashsagarsuri Gyanmandir
Atman and Moksa
liberation is attained after the body of the devotee disappears. But an individual can attain (aftar) liberation even while alive, while leading a worldly life if he can successfully free himself from the attachments to the world, discard the world only as an illusion, and can overcome the distinctions of the world. His bodily existence being caused by the previous Karma continues as long as the Karma that has begun its operation does not get exhausted.
The idea of liberation of Slamkara is based upon his metaphysics of the soul. The soul is the Brahman and it is eternally free. All distinctions and particularities are due to the fictitious adjuncts caused by nescience and they are wrongly superimposed upon the Ātman by the finite mind. In fact, release or liberation is not the creation of something new nor an attainment of something which did not previously exist; on the contrary, Mokşa or liberation is eternal. It is ageold. As S'amkara says release is not something which is to be brought about, but is something the nature of which is permanently established, and is reached through knowledge. Moksa is eternal and co-existent with the Brahman itself because it is nothing else but the free and unbound nature of the Brahman or Self itself. It is the essential nature of the Brahman to be eternally free, unaffected, and unrestricted by any other thing outside itself, and it is also an established truth that there is nothing second to the Brahman. The sense of bondage in
1 S'amkara (Com.) on Vedānta Sotras. Tr. Thibaut, 3.4.52, Vol. II, p. 330.
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