IB World Religions 1.9.2. the Human Condition: Jiva, Ajiva and the Weight of Karma Notes

1.9.2. The Human Condition: Jiva, Ajiva and the Weight of Karma

Jiva and ajiva

1. Jain teaching begins by dividing everything that exists into two: jiva, the soul or living substance, and ajiva, everything that is not a soul. Jains hold that both are eternal and uncreated, and that no God made either.
2. A jiva is defined by chetana, consciousness. In its own nature Jains hold that every jiva has infinite knowledge, perception, bliss and energy, though in an embodied life all four are covered over.
3. Jains count jivas as infinite in number and classify them by how many senses they have. Humans and animals have five, while the ekendriya, the one-sensed beings, including bodies of earth, water, fire, air and plant matter, have touch alone.
4. That last claim carries most of the weight of Jain ethics. If a drop of water or a flame houses souls, then almost every ordinary action harms somebody, and the rest of the religion follows from taking that seriously.
5. Ajiva covers matter (pudgala) along with space, time and the media that make motion and rest possible. Only matter can attach to a soul, and Jains hold that karma is an extremely fine kind of matter.
6. The relation between the two is the problem the tradition exists to solve. A jiva by its own nature is weightless and rises, but loaded with matter it stays in the world of bodies and births.

Karma as subtle matter

1. Karma in Jain teaching is not only a moral law. Jains hold that karma consists of extremely fine particles of matter, present everywhere, which attach themselves to a jiva when it acts.
2. Action here means yoga, the activity of body, speech and mind. Any such activity draws karmic matter toward the soul in a process Jains call asrava, influx.
3. Influx by itself does not bind. What makes the particles stick are the kashayas, the passions: anger (krodha), pride (mana), deceit (maya, which in Jain usage means crookedness rather than illusion) and greed (lobha).
4. The result is bandha, bondage, in which karmic matter fuses with the soul. The intensity of the passion fixes how long the particles stay and how strongly they will work.
5. Jains sort karma into eight types. Four are ghatiya, destructive, because they cover the soul's own qualities, obscuring its knowledge and perception, deluding its judgement and blocking its energy.
6. The other four are aghatiya, non-destructive, and settle the circumstances of a life: what it feels, what body it takes, what social position it holds and how long it lasts.

How karma binds

1. The binding is described in physical terms throughout. Karma has weight, so Jains speak of a soul heavy with it and of a soul made light by losing it.
2. Leshya, the colouring of the soul, describes the tone that passion gives it. Six colours run from black through blue, grey, yellow and pink to white, the darkest belonging to the most violent states of mind.
3. Because intention governs how much karma is bound, Jains treat carelessness as a genuine fault. Harm done knowingly binds more than harm done by accident, but the accident still binds something.
4. This is why Jains regard even unavoidable harm as a debt. Eating, walking and breathing destroy small lives, and the tradition's answer is to reduce the harm rather than to declare it negligible.
5. Karma also sets the length of the next life. Jains hold that this ayu karma, the lifespan karma, is bound at one particular moment in the present life, which gives the state of mind near death a special importance.
6. Nothing outside the soul administers any of this. Jains describe the whole process as automatic, closer to a reaction between substances than to a verdict in a court.

Samsara, ignorance and suffering

1. Samsara is the endless round of birth, death and rebirth in which Jains hold every unliberated jiva is caught. Nobody placed souls there, and Jains treat it as the default state of a soul weighed down with matter.
2. The cycle is marked by ignorance and by suffering. Mithyatva, wrong belief, is the root of it: the soul takes the body and its circumstances for its own nature.
3. From that misidentification the passions follow, and from the passions more karma, so ignorance and bondage keep feeding each other.
4. Jains describe the suffering concretely as birth after birth in bodies of every kind, most of them without the capacity to understand the situation they are in.
5. A human birth is therefore treated as rare and valuable, since Jains hold that only a human being can take the vows and do the work of shedding karma.
6. Suffering in this account is not a punishment. It is what happens when something weightless is loaded with weight.

The condition in daily life

1. Because Jains hold that souls fill the world, ordinary conduct becomes a matter of constant care. The doctrine is treated as a set of instructions rather than as a picture to admire.
2. Diet shows this most clearly. Jains are vegetarian, and many avoid root vegetables such as potatoes, onions and garlic, since pulling up a root kills the whole plant along with the small lives clustered around it.
3. Many Jains also avoid eating after dark, on the ground that insects are harder to see at night and more easily swallowed.
4. Mendicants make the care visible. Sthanakvasi and Terapanth Jains wear a muhpatti, a cloth over the mouth, so that the breath does not harm tiny lives in the air, and mendicants carry a soft brush, the rajoharana, to sweep a seat before using it.
5. The passions receive the same attention as the actions. Jains practise pratikramana, a periodic review and confession of faults, because the kashayas bind karma even when nothing visible has been done.
6. Digambara and Svetambara Jains agree on this whole analysis. Their disagreements concern who can reach liberation and how much may be worn along the way, not what the human condition is.