Some Jaina Canonical Sutras

SR No.: 011033
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Bimla Charn Law
Publisher: Royal Asiatic Society
Publication Year: 1949
Total Pages: 229
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Agam, & Canon
File Size: 24 MB

Page 203

PRINCIPLES OF JAINISM
189
from Sathāyadristi involving various types of non-action (akriyā), scepticism (vicikitsā) and formalism (silavrataparamarsa). One man admits action and another man does not admit it. Both men are alike. Their case is the same because they are actuated by the same force, i.e. by destiny. It is on account of their destiny that all beings come to have a body to undergo the vicissitudes of life and to experience pleasure and pain.
According to the Sutrakritanga the types of akriyāvāda are as follows:
(1) On the dissolution of the five elements, e.g. earth, water, fire, wind and air, living beings cease to exist. On the dissolution of the body the individual ceases to be. Everybody has an individual soul. The soul exists as long as the body exists.
(2) When a man acts or causes another to act, it is not his soul which acts or causes to act.1
(3) There are five elements and the soul is a sixth substance. These six substances are imperishable.
(4) Pleasure, pain, and final beatitude are not caused by the souls themselves, but the individual souls experience them.
(5) The world has been created or is governed by the gods. It is produced from chaos. (Sūtrakṛtānga, 1. 1. 3. 5-8). (6) The world is boundless and eternal.
All these views are reduced to four main types that correspond to those associated in the Pali Nikayas with four leading thinkers of the time, e.g. atheism like that of Ajita, eternalism like that of Katyayana, absolutism like that of Kasyapa and fatalism like that of Gośāla.
The types of kriyāvada that do not come up to the standard of Jainism are the following:
(1) The soul of a man who is pure will become free from bad karma on reaching beatitude but in that state it will again become defiled through pleasant excitement or hatred. (2) If a man with the intention of killing a body hurts a gourd mistaking it for a baby, he will be guilty of murder. If a man with the intention of roasting a gourd roasts a baby, mistaking him for a gourd, he will not be guilty of murder.
The Jains do not deny the existence of the soul as an eternal substance with consciousness as its fundamental attribute. It is an active principle since it has to bear the
1 Cf. Sutrakṛtānga, I, 1. 1. 13.
* Sūtrak tānga, I, 12, 21; Majjhima Nikaya, I, 483; Sūtrakr.,I, 6, 27; I,
10, 17.