RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHIES OF INDIA - JAINISM

THE MASK OF PERSONALITY, PART III, CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH:

...The mind has been bewitched, trapped by the pressures of a blind life-force that whirls creatures along in a cycling, never ending stream. And why? Who or what is doing this? Who is the fool that keeps this dim-witted entertainment on the boards?

The answer that would have to be given to you should you be unable to find it for yourself would be simply--Man: Man himself: each individual, each one of us. And the answer is obvious. For each one of us goes on doing what has always been done, continually imagining himself to be doing something different. Our brain, our tongue, our organs of action, are incorrigibly possessed by a drive to be doing something --and we do it. That is how we build up new tasks for ourselves, contaminating ourselves every minute with NEW PARTICLES OF KARMIC MATTER, which enter into our nature, flow into our life-monad, sully its essence, and bedim its light. These involvements fetter us to an existence murkey with desire and ignorance; and here we treasure our transitory personality as though it were something substantial--we cling to the short spell of our confused life which is the only thing of which we are aware of, we cherish the brief passage of our individual existence between birth and thefuneral pyre--and thus unconsciously prolong the period of our own bondage indefinitely into the future. By being active in the pursuit of what we conceive to be our own or someone else's welfare and happiness, we only make our own bonds, as well as everyone else's the tighter,

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SHER SINGH AGRAWAL
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