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The Jain Account: Matter Shed, Not Merged

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The Jain Account: Matter Shed, Not Merged

Of the three traditions named in this entry, Jainism gives moksha the most literal and mechanically precise account, and it is worth setting out on its own because it differs sharply from both the Hindu schools compared in the first article and from anything a reader might import from Buddhist or Christian vocabulary.

For Jainism, the soul (jiva) is by nature pure, conscious and possessed of infinite knowledge, perception, bliss and power; what obscures this nature is karma, understood not as a moral ledger but as literal subtle matter (karma-pudgala) that flows into the soul through activity and passion and adheres to it, weighing it down and clouding its natural qualities. Liberation therefore requires two operations: samvara, stopping the further influx of karmic matter through disciplined conduct and right belief, and nirjara, shedding the matter already accumulated, chiefly through austerity (tapas), including the controlled fasting for which Jain ascetics are known.

When every particle of karmic matter has been shed, the liberated soul, a siddha, rises, being naturally weightless once unburdened by matter, to the siddhashila, a realm at the top of the Jain universe, and remains there eternally, motionless, in perfect and unchanging knowledge and bliss, with no further embodiment and no return to rebirth. There is no merger with a universal reality, as Advaita describes, and no eternal relationship with a personal Lord, as the theistic Vedanta schools describe: each siddha remains a distinct soul among the other liberated souls occupying the same realm, forever separate, closer in structure to Samkhya's isolated consciousness than to either Hindu theistic option.

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