(b) Conscious or Living Beings:
A living being is a conscious entity. It
is the most important aspect of reality. The conscious being (jiva) is
also called soul. It knows and feels. It acts and is acted upon. It
suffers by its association with matter and is born again and again, only
to suffer. There is a plurality of souls in the universe. Each soul is
subject to the same laws of karma and rebirth. The highest endeavor of the
soul is to free itself from this bondage of karma and attain salvation.
Souls are divided into two major groups:
Liberated (mukta) souls and worldly (samsari) souls. Worldly souls are in
the bondage of karma and are subject to birth, growth, old age and death
which are characteristic of this world.
The classification of the living beings
(worldly souls) is based on the number of sense organs (indriyas) present
in the living beings. The lowest of these are the one-sensed (ekendriya)
living beings which are immobile (sthavar). They are endowed with only one
sense, that of touch (sparsh). Plants and trees belong to this class of
living beings. There are also other microscopic single-sensed organisms (sukshma
ekendriya jivas) which are subtle and invisible to the naked eye. These
microscopic organisms are found in
earth, water, air, etc.
The next higher living beings are mobile
(trasa). These are:
two-sensed (dwindriya) having the senses
of touch and taste
three-sensed (trindriya) having the
senses of touch, taste and smell
four-sensed (chaturindriya) possessing
the senses of touch, taste, smell and sight
five-sensed (panchendriya), having the
senses of touch,
taste, smell, sight and hearing
All higher animais belong to the class
of five-sensed beings. Almost all five-sensed living beings are endowed
with a mind (manas), the faculty of thinking. Man is a five-sensed living
being with a mind. Besides human beings, according to Jainism, there are
heavenly beings (devas) and beings living in hell (narak).
The five nonliving entities together
with the living beings are aspects of reality in Jainism.
3.4 KARMA THEORY
Bhagwan Mahavir visualized that the
world is full of misery and sorrows, and, therefore, he concluded that the
fundamental object of religion should be to help the worldly souls cross
the river of sorrows and obtain deliverance from the cycles of births and
deaths. The root cause of the soul's worldly career is its own actions
which associate it with different types of external material particles
(karma). There are the following eight types of karma:
1. The perception-obscuring (darshanavarni)
karma
2. The knowledge-obscuring (jnanavarni)
karma
3. The feeling-producing (vedaniya)
karma
4. The deluding (mohaniya) karma
5. The life-span-determining (aayu)
karma
6. The physique-determining (naam) karma
7. The status-determining (gorta) karma
8. The obstructing (antaraya) karma
All living beings, whether human or
sub-human, are subject to the influence of these eight types of karma.
According to another classification,
karma are of two kinds:
physical (dravya) karma which are
material particles and
abstract (bhava) karma which are impure
mental dispositions.
The physical karmic particles constitute
the karmic body
associated with the soul. Around this
subtle body, the gross material body is built through nutrition from the
environment.
It is the abstract karma (the feelings
and emotions) which is responsible for attracting material karmic
particles to the soul. The physical karma in its turn influences the
psychological disposition. Thus a
psycho-physical cycle is maintained between the physical karma and
abstract karma.
