Dr. Samani Mangal Pragya
Non-restraint, remissness, passions etc. are the internal causes of karmic bondage. They are not directly perceivable by senses. The external causes are activities of mind, speech and body which can be subject of our direct experience. Internal causes are hidden in the background whereas the external causes are overt and can be experienced. Belief of a common man is that karmic bondage occurs due to the mental, physical and verbal activities. Now, a question arises here, that only those beings shall have inauspicious karmic bondage, who possesses mind, body & speech i.e. who can think, speak and perform the intended activities. How can a being, who does not have potency to think of good or bad, unable to speak or is stable like a rod having no sign of consciousness, get into the bondage of karma? If even such beings get bound with karmas, then, even in the liberated beings there must be an acceptance of karmic bondage. There is no reason of bondage in one-sensed beings and beings without reasoning power (vikalendriya), because they do not have physical, mental or verbal violent tendencies. The cause of karmic bondage is yoga/action. Yoga has three modes-mind, speech and body. The souls which do not undertake these activities, how can then there be a possibility of bondage among them?
In response, Jain philosophy states that the main cause of bondage is neither expressed nor non-expressed mental physical or verbal activities, but the main cause of bondage is avirati i.e. non-restraint/lack of self-restraint. Beings like one-sensed etc. are also non-restrained in the sense that they are open to committing any of the eighteen sinful deeds hence the five doors of influx remain open. So, even though there is no bondage of karma due to actions on gross level, even then, there is always a way open for bondage due to non-restraint (avirati). In the beings, devoid of mind and even among most beings endowed with mind, the feeling of conscious restraint over violence does not emerge. Due to this, they are in a non-restrained category. Those who are non-restraint beings, will undergo karmic bondage.
Their psyche is continuously and unconsciously involved in eighteen sinful deeds. So, they are prone to karmic bondage.[1]
