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THE DOCTRINE OF MASKARIN GOSALA
whole universe into a vast purgatory of numerous long-lasting stages. Creation becomes a kind of cosmic laboratory in which innumerable monads, by a long, slow, alchemical process of transformation, become gradually relincd, enriched, and cleansed; passing from darker, lower modes of being to higherpassing through sufferings ever renewed-until at last they stand endowed with moral discrimination and spiritual insight, in human form, at the threshold of release.
One can understand why such a philosophy vanished from the historical scene after a few centuries. It proved to be unbcarable. Teaching a fatalistic patience in a virtually endless bondage, demanding resignation without compensation, conceding nothing to moral and spiritual will-puwer, it simply offered no answer to the burning questions of the seehing, empty human soul. It left no place for the practice of virtue with the normal human aim of winning some reward, offered no ficld for the cxcrcise of will-power, and no reason for making lifc-plans, gave no hope for compensation, the only source of purification being the natural process of evolution; and that simply took time-eons of time-procecding slowly and automatically, regardless of man's inward cffort, like a biochemical process.
And yet, according to this "hempen shirt" doctrine of Gosāla, man's moral conduct is not without significance; for every living being, through its characteristic pattern of reactions to the environment, betrays its entire multibiographical history, together with all that it has yet to learn. Its acts are not the cause of the influx (āsrava) of fresh karmic substance, as in the Jaina view, but only reveal its position or classification in the general hierarchy, showing how deeply entangled or close to release it happens to be. Our words and deeds, that is to say, announce to ourselves—and to the world-every minute, just what milestone we have come to. Thus perfect asceticism, though it has no causative, has yet a symptomatic value: it is the characteristic mode of life of a being who is on the point of reaching the goal
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