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THE JAINA DOCTRINE OF RELEASE any longer in the play on the stage of life. His goal is to achieve a state of intentional psychic paralysis. Rejecting every kind of mask and holding with a subline stubbornness to his invincible state of non-co-operation, finally he wins. The busy host of players who fill the universe, still enchanted by their roles and eager to go on contending with each other for the limelight, changing masks and lines from life to lifc, enacting all the sufferings, achievements, and surprises of their biographies, siinply turn from him and let him go. He has escaped. So far as the world is concerned, he is a useless fool.
The final state to which the Jaina monk thus wins is termed, as we have said, kaivalya, “isolation," "completeness through integration"-which means absolute release; for when every particle of karmic substance has becn burnt out, no influx of new seeds having been permitted, thcre remains no longer any possibility of maturing a new experience. Even the danger of becoming a celestial being has been overcome-a king of gods, an Indra, wielding the thunderbolt and enjoying in domains of heavenly bliss, for periods of numerous oceans of time, the delectable fruits of virtuous conduct in former lives. All the ties that ever fettered the life-monad, whether to higher or to lower realms of being, have been dissolved away. No coloring remains as a hue of kinship to prompt one to assume the garb of some element, plant, animal, human or superhuman being; no hue of ignorance to make one move. And though the body may remain intact for a few more days, until its metabolism has completely ceased, the center of attraction of the life-monad has already lifted far beyond this mortal coil.
For karmic matter, subtle though it is, is a weight that pulls the monad down, retaining it in one or another of the spheres of ignorant action, the precise placement of the monad in these spheres being dependent upon its density or specific gravity, which is indicated by its hue. The darker leśyās-deep blue or black-hold the monad in the lower storeys of the universe, the
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| SR No. | 007309 |
| Book Title | Philosophies of India |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell |
| Publisher | Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd |
| Publication Year | 1953 |
| Total Pages | 709 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 34 MB |