Sense of Soul - Jainism: Living With Less & Mastering Karma

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

Happy New Year!! Today on Sense of Soul podcast we have, Subhash Jain he is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Civil & Environmental Enginnering at The University of Iowa. He was born in India into a family that practiced Jainism and he continued to do so after coming to the US in 1967. After retiring in 2003, he concentrated on studying Indian Philosophy, particularly the Jain karma doctrine, and received another Ph.D. degree in Jainolgy from the University of Madras. He has published two books and several articles in journals and magazines on the karma doctrine. He’s joining us today to talk about ‘The Path to Inner Peace, Mastering Karma,’ which presents the fundamental principles of the Jain karma doctrine through a fictional account of the relationship between a guru and his American student. As the story unfolds, the guru instructs the student on how ‘karmic debt’ is incurred as the result of personal action and how this ‘debt’ can be reduced through behavioral choices. With an emphasis on nonviolent action, Jainism elucidates the path whereby karmic attachment is decreased, leading to inner peace. The Path to Inner Peace serves as an in-depth analysis of which actions lead to karmic attachment, how to avoid karmic attachment and what the consequences of karmic attachment are. Path to Inner Peace: Mastering Karma by Subhash Jain is available from www.mantra-books.com and wherever books are sold. Order his book on Amazon here:  The Path to Inner Peace: Mastering Karma If you have any questions you can email Subhash at [e-mail] Visit Sense of Soul at www.mysenseofsoul.com Do you want Ad Free episodes? Join our Sense of Soul Patreon, our community of seekers and lightworkers. Also recieve 50% off of Shanna’s Soul Immersion experience as a Patreon member, monthly Sacred circles, Shanna and Mande’s personal mini series, Sense of Soul merch and more. https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul Thank you to our Sponsor KACHAVA, Use this link for 10% off! www.kachava.com/senseofsoul    

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Check out our Patreon. Happy New Year's. Today with us, we have Subhash Jain. He is a professor emeritus in the Department of Civil Environmental Engineering at the University of Iowa. After retiring in 2003, he concentrated on studying Indian philosophy, particularly the Jain Karma Doctrine, and has a PhD degree in Janology from the University of Madras. He has published two books and several articles in journals and magazines on the karma doctrine. And today he's here with us to talk about his new book, The Path to Inner Peace, Mastering Karma, which presents the fundamental principles of the Jain Karma doctrine. And I'm super excited to have Sapaash with us today to learn all about Jainism and how

to master our karma. I'm happy to finally connect with you. Yes, I'm glad to be here. I'm super excited to talk about something we really haven't talked about, Jainism. I love the study of different religions. Probably you know there are four faiths which they originated from India and I think most people know at least one faith because that they hear quite a lot called Hinduism. So one of the faiths which originated in India was Hinduism. Is it the oldest faith? No, I think that that's a debate. I think every person wants to say, no, we are the oldest. So that is debatable but yeah i think western people probably agreed probably hindu is probably the oldest but there is three more faiths which originated in india the second faith most vets they start knowing for the last 30 years is called buddhism because

they start doing yoga and meditation things like that so they became little more familiar with Buddhism also started from India but very few people know that there is was another faith which is fairly ancient and at least they think they are ancient than the other two faiths is called Jainism. So Jainism also is a very ancient faith and very well developed faith. Jainism say that it was revived by our last like your apostles we have we call Tirthankara. There is there was a last apostle in our faith which was Mahavira and Mahavira and Buddha, they were contemporary. They were together and they saw each other. They met each other.

They knew each other. So most Western historians agree that definitely Jainism is as old as Buddhism. And you know, Buddhism is definitely about 2500 years old, it's a very old religion. Now historians start agreeing there was probably another fellow earlier than Mahavira who started this faith and which was about 3000 years ago but it's a fairly ancient religion. Everybody agrees religion everybody agrees that the Buddha and Mahaviraja were contemporary. So it is definitely 2500 years old faith. So it's a very very old religion. The only thing is the number of followers of this faith are not very large. And fourth one is a fairly recent faith which was originated called Sikhism. So this faith Sikhism is originated about 500 years ago. So it's fairly recent. So the four faiths which originated in India,

three faiths are fairly ancient. Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism and Sikhism is a fairly recent faith. Who is that Mahabharata? Where would that fall under? Mahabharata is an epic, a Hindu epic. And we really don't know when that epic was written. So really nobody knows that. It's an epic. We really don't know whether they were really there, if they were real or not.

Kind of debatable. And one of the characters in Mahabharata is Krishna, because Gita, one of their famous scripture in Hinduism, is in Mahabharata. And so but we really don't know when Mahabharata written. And so we really can't say how old is this Mahabharata. But again, Hindus, they say, yeah, it's one of their oldest epic they have. I just recently read into the story of the princes and all of the wives and the children. And I just I liked the story. Yeah, I think most faith will have some stories because it's easy to explain the basics of the faith through stories because some of these concepts can be a little complicated.

So if you build up some stories and you can convey the message through stories, so it's fairly common. In most faith scriptures, they will have stories so in general also we have one section of our scriptures which talk deals with the stories only and they tell these details of the stories but again if somebody wants to go a little deeper I think you'll have to go beyond the stories to really understand this faith that's the problem. And the main difference between Hinduism and Jainism is in the belief in God. That these two faiths, Jainism and Buddhism, they don't believe in God. That's the difference. So we don't believe in God.

And that's the main difference between the Western religion your abrahamic religion all these three faiths judaism christianity and muslim or islam they believe in god and similarly hindus also believe in god and of course they have several versions they believe in one god they believe in multiple gods they have so many gods that you won't be really, what number is 33 million gods. So I don't know which story to believe. So they believe in God, but surprisingly, these two faiths, Jainism and Buddhism, they don't believe in God. That's the main thing. And that becomes a little bit complicated because it's quite different because everybody thinks to create something you need a creator.

Okay, yes. So who created this universe? That's the main thing that they think, oh, somebody created this universe. But the question we ask, Jaina asks, if you need a creator to create something, then you need a creator of the creator also because somebody must have created the god and okay then you say oh yeah okay there was another person who created the god and who created that again i think in every faith you will have to start with certain presupposition there is some faith belief system that is is fine. It's okay. You believe that there was somebody who created the universe.

Fine. We believe no. This universe was there all the time. And this universe will remain all the time. So you really don't need any creator. Because if it is eternal. And it was there uncreated. It was there all the time.

Then why do you need a creator? Surprisingly even Buddhism. They also don't believe in God. So Jainism and Buddhism, because these two were contemporary, the founders, they exchanged ideas and they both agreed, I think somehow that, yeah, they don't, there is no God and actually we created God, not God created us. That's the main difference. Before even humans were on the on the universe, there was no God at that time. Nobody knew God. So we created God as

a human being. We created something. Oh, we start asking questions. Oh, how? Who created this thing? Okay, so we couldn't find the answer. Oh, yeah, there was something somebody who created the God and we created this universe and we call it God. It's fine. There's nothing wrong. So that's the main difference. Basically, so most faith, they believe in God, which is okay. And we believe, no, there is no creator.

And the universe was there, uncreated, and it will remain forever. Okay. You, like most faiths, believe in reincarnation. Yeah. You see, all these four faiths which originated in India, they believe in a law of karma. So they believe in karma doctrine or law of karma so all four faith hinduism buddhism jainism sikhism all four faith believe in karma and once you believe in karma they say you know because you will not bear the consequences of your action in this life so those you'll have to come back again

in future life so they cannot really explain without reincarnation. So all these four faiths, they believe in reincarnation. There is no doubt about it. And that because they think that suppose you did some action and somebody shot you and you are not able to really reap the fruit of your past karma, then there are some consequences which are not taken care of. So you have to come back because you did this some act and you didn't bear the fruit. So the karma doctrine and reincarnation goes side by side. One cannot survive without the other. If you believe in karma doctrine, you have to believe in reincarnation. That's the main problem. So what does karma mean to you? Karma is a Sanskrit word, means action.

So we do action all the time. And so we, instead of saying I am doing, for example, I am doing, talking to you. So I am doing action of talking. You are listening to me. You are doing action of talking you are listening to me you are doing action of listening so we are doing action so we do keep doing action all the time so instead of using word action we say we do karma all the time so karma means action basically and the important thing is every action will have consequences. And that's what this law of karma or karma doctrine tells us. And you have to bear those consequences in the future.

Okay. So is there some sort of doctrine or scripture or any kind of ancient text that goes along with Jainism? Yeah. You see, again, you'll find that there's another problem in first Trigi which are the oldest residents there is not a single text that's the main problem just like Bible or Quran or Torah in your western faith. In Indian faith except Sikh, they have one book. So, yeah, because it's a fairly recent. So and so they had one book. You can find all the details in one book.

But in these three religions, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, there is not a single text. So you have to definitely read several texts to really to understand this faith. That's the main problem. So to answer your question, there is not a single text I can say. But later on, we can definitely find one or two texts that if you read those couple of texts, that you at least will understand the basic of these faiths so depending upon how deep you want to go into that particular faith for example in Mahabharata this Gita thing if you read Gita you will get some idea what Hinduism is so similarly we have one text

which you can read you'll get some idea but but will not say no this is the only book we have and that's the main we'll say yeah you can get idea reading this book but still you'll have to read some additional books so was it originally from like a sanskrit um if there was teachings yeah you see again all these three faiths which are fairly ancient faiths, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, they were written in different scripts. Hindus use Sanskrit, Buddhists use a language called Pali, P-A-L-I, Pali. And Jainism is called Prakritik. So there are three different. They are very similar.

They are very similar to Sanskrit, but they are different language because they are local dialects when we're speaking at that time. So they wrote these scriptures in the language which was spoken at that time. So at Buddhist time, where the people were talking Pali, so they wrote their scriptures in Pali. In Jainism case, they were talking Prakritik, so they wrote in this Prakritik language. So I would say all these three different faiths, they have different language, which is not very different, which is very similar to Sanskrit. So they are quite similar. Now, do Chantism have any deities that resemble, you know, some sort of angel?

No, you see the distinction. We definitely want that if you understand the purpose of life, why we are here, then you can understand what we are talking about. Just like in Christianity also, they say that you are born as a sinner because Adam and Eve, they didn't follow some rules and we are born as a sinner. Every one of us is a sinner. That's what in Christianity is. We also call that every human being carries some karmic debt. You see, we use instead of sin, we use a term called karmic debt. Everybody carries a karmic debt because they did some deed in the past and due to those deeds, they collected some karmic debt. So jainism hinduism buddhism

this is what they call moksha nirvana or salvation or you become pure soul so my soul is impure because my soul carries some karmic debt so once i get rid of this karmic debt, doing some good actions, then my karmic debt will become zero and my soul will become pure soul. So every soul has the potential to become pure soul. And those pure soul, they cannot really do anything. They don't act like deity or angel or God. They cannot do anything for yourself. They just basically, they are pure soul. So they don't have what we call this pain and suffering. So they are free of pain and suffering. See the title of my book, this inner peace. This inner peace is basically once the soul becomes pure soul, then it attains inner peace. And then inner peace is a different thing.

This what we call happiness, which we get through our all these senses. If I see something good or sometimes eat something good, I feel good. So these are sensual pleasure. These are not really inner peace. So we are trying to find inner peace, is the characteristic of soul not of body. They are most of the time think oh I am the body. Who am I? Oh I am that tall. My name is this. I am of this color. All these I talk about body but we keep forgetting there is another thing beside body sense of soul yeah so because this table sitting in front of me they they doesn't have soul and surprisingly nobody really talks about the soul we do every

you get up early in the morning you just do all the all the time you care of your body you really don't pay any attention to your soul and that's the main problem and this is what at least in my book that I address that we have to take care of our soul which is more important than body if you want really what I call inner peace then it has to be through soul. So that's that's kind of like in Gnosticism where I found where Jesus was teaching the inner journey, that the kingdom was found inside of you. Yep. And, you know, but yet, you know, what we're taught, you know, in the dogma of religion

is that everything is outside of you. So everyone's always searching for everything outside, their happiness, their success, but the soul work, right, the evolution of your soul, not just in this life, but overall, is all found within and this is where the peace lies. Yes, right, exactly. And again, depending upon your starting assumption, because if you believe in God and then you say, God, take care of all these consequences and actions because he keeps the account, then you need not to really worry about too much about karma doctrine because somebody will keeping the account and he's doing all these things and he did the judgment.

And then you go to hell or heaven or whatever you need not to worry about but these two faith buddhism and jainism because they don't believe in god and they believe in karma doctrine then question is oh boy that who who keeps this account that what type of action you did and what kind of reward or punishment you will get. So because if there is no God, so now we know a little bit more about body because we have another body inside which we call genetic body. And we know genetic body has a lot of information. A tiny molecule of your DNA, it has so many, you won't believe that what is included in your DNA is a tremendous amount of information. So in Jainism, we also believe beside genetic body,

there is another body, which we call karmic body. And that karmic body keeps everything, the account of all your actions, your karmas what type of karma you did so all those accounting is done with this with this karmic body so we in order to understand how this law of karma works then you have to understand this karmic body is it like in a body yeah yeah yeah so you, that's the main problem in jainism because we cannot really, genetic body we can see now because through microscope and electronic microscope, we can at least see what they are talking about. But this karmic body is very, very fine. It's so fine, all this existing instruments, you can't see this karmic body.

So still everything is in imagination. Oh, there is a body. But the kind of details they give you, then I think you make sense. Because scientists also have this problem. Because scientists found, they talk about this mass or energy in the universe and they talk about 96% mass energy is called dark matter and dark energy. they can't see. They only can observe and see only 4%. So they are talking about what they call these new particles, God particle or this particle, whatever they're calling these days. Yeah. So they think that all this space also believe that that fine matter which scientists are talking about is probably that matter our karmic bodies is made up of that matter. I agree, scalar energy, Tesla, he definitely understood. I want to ask you genetics, our ancestors, how much of our ancestors' karma are we carrying within our journey?

In Jainism, I can say probably in Buddhism, in Jainism, when you die, you leave your body here. It doesn't go with your soul. And suppose in next next life depending upon what type of action I did in this life if I did good action probably I will be born as a human being again but if I did very bad action probably I will born as an animal or insect because in Jainism depending upon your action you can become very primitive type of life in the next life. And you can come back as a human being also, or you can go even heaven. Maybe though you would decide to go back into the same lineage to heal the karma if there was something. No, you wouldn't.

When the soul leaves the body at death, it cannot carry any matter with it. It carries only very fine matter. It carries karmic body and it carries karmic body has no mass, is a massless. Okay, I follow. Yeah, that's and I think scientists also start agreeing now that there is a lot of matter in this universe which is massless so this 90 percent dark matter and dark energy there is a lot of matter which has no mass so so looks like is what Jainism is saying that karmic body is massless is a possibility because scientists are also talking about so this karmic body is massless is a possibility because scientists are also talking about. So this karmic body just take kind of a information it carries the information about the

action you did in your past life and you just take that karmic body the soul takes karmic body with it and then born again and because that that information is there in the karmic body. So just to start is the next life, the next reincarnation. So that's the idea. But within the DNA that your mother and father, that you are, aside from the soul thing, I had to work through some stuff that was became patterns in my family, you know, from generation. And it was very powerful to be the first woman say to do certain things.

And it is just overall, I think the feminine energy is rising. And actually we had a beautiful woman come on our podcast. She wrote a book called The Roaring Goddess and talked about the women in India, how there are so many goddesses and women were honored and whatnot. But in certain religious establishments, you know, I mean, gosh, it wasn't that long ago.

Women weren't even allowed in a temple. And I know that I'm more familiar with the Buddhists in Jainism, where are they with, you know, that equality? Yeah, no, I think they really didn nun. So they were nun and monks in that group. So both men and women, they became, they start following this faith. So there was no discrimination at all. So they put both men and women. You see, they know this pure soul. Pure soul has no gender.

Because you might come back as either one. Yes, definitely. You can come back as an insect. Plant life. Because we believe in the plant has a life. And we believe plant as a living being. So in Jainism, you can define these different type of lives depending on how many senses you have. You can have one sense, two sense, three senses, four and five. Maximum senses are five.

We know human being have five senses, you know, touch, taste, smell, color, and hearing. So we have these five senses. So we are five sense living being. Plant have only one sense. It has touch. It doesn't taste. It can't smell. It can't see. it can't hear, but it has one sense. There are certain insects, they eat, they have mouth, they can eat, but they don't have hearing power or smelling power. But then you get these ants, three sense living beings, then reptiles, for example, reptiles, they are four sense living beings. They can't hear. You see snake or lizard, they can't hear. If you clap, they have only four senses.

But then, of course, then you have all these animal kingdom, they become five sense living beings. So where does karma fall in? Obviously, a plant can't have karma, can it? All living beings doing action. They do only one type of action because they have, you see, we have three means of action, mind, body and speech. I can do action with my mind.

I can do action with my, I'm talking to you, this is an action. And I can do action with my body. So there are three different means of action I have. But plants have only one means of action, just body. It doesn't have speech, it doesn't have mind. So he can do action only with bodies. It's looking for sun, it will bend where the sunlight is coming, it will go there, roots will go towards. So we know all these plants. They have this sense of touch because if you plant a seed somewhere and they know the water is on that side, so the root will go on that side. It won't go the other way. So it can sense that, OK, water is there and it will go in that direction. If the solar is there, they bet on that side so they have sense there is no

doubt but they have only one sense and they are doing these actions because they have to survive in order to survive they have to eat they have everybody has to eat something so they are eating thing plant is basically this photosynthesis solar energy and they synthesize, but they have to eat something, they have to get energy from somewhere. So they are doing action. When we say action, there are two types, there is a physical action and there is psychic action also, because you have a soul. So soul is also contributing your action. When you are doing any action, you have certain intention, certain desire, certain motivation. So plant want to send its roots in the direction of water. It has attachment in the dough.

I have to go there. So doing those action with some intention, definitely. And so that intention is very important. The motivation is very important in action. And depending on your motivation, you can define whether your action is good or bad. You see, in order to get consequences, you need to know whether you did a good action or bad action. And good and bad action does not depend on your physical action. It depends on your motivation. Why are you doing that? If you're trying to hurt somebody, that's

we know is a bad motivation and then we say, oh no, it's not a good action. So in jainism, motivation is very, very important. And in my book, you'll find a word called MOHA. MOHA is a word which tells you whatversion. Things you like, you get attached. Things you hate, you don't like them. So this attachment and aversion is the main problem. And I think the pure soul doesn't have any attachment and aversion. He just becomes neutral. He has equanimity and doesn't care. So we have to get rid of this attachment and aversion.

And that's Moha and depending upon the intensity of Moha when we can define how good action or how bad action are and what kind of consequences you will have and that controls your karmic debt. If you do action with less Moha then you get less karmic debt. If you do action with very large intensity of moha, then you get large karmic debt. So somehow you have to control your karmic debt through this moha and do these actions without really having lots of attachment and aversion. That's the main thing we have to talk about in Jainism. Jainism, this moha thing is very, very important. You're a great teacher.

I'm fully following you. Yes, I can tell how passionate your action is. And so when I think about the intention, when you were just speaking, that is good karma, right? Coming from the soul, soul can feel it in you yeah but this passion word we have a slightly different word in jainism we call kashay which is in english we will call passion but i will call it negative passion negative passions are not good if you are angry angry to become angry is also passion, which is a negative passion. Right competition and to win, to have the most right. So we have to make a distinction between positive

emotions and negative emotion or negative passions and positive passions and what I'm talking about this MOA, I'm talking about negative, negative passions, which are like anger, greed, deceit, these kind of things. And our world, especially here at the West is set up for us to fail in that MOA because you know, it's like go to school, get your degrees, be the best make the most you know look the best we're set up and conditioned for bad moa yeah yeah that's true yeah in india we have the jainism but still most people are so engrossed in their daily life it never occurs to us that we have a soul we all the time time, every single person thinks, oh, I am the body. That's it.

And you take care of your body. And everything I do for my body, I just never care about my soul. Only recently, I would say for the last one year or so, at times now I start thinking about soul and I start doing slightly at least thinking about that I should do something for my soul so I'm cutting down I'm trying to live with less my motto is try to live with less minimalist and so that's the important thing and I that's what I'm trying to do here and you see you will see my dress here and now every day I just wear only this dress. I'm trying to give up all clothings and I just want to just have only one type of dress so it is cutting down my requirements. Why should I have my closet full of all those different dresses?

So bad my closet is so bad I don't even know what's in there exactly so now you don't believe i have started doing this thing only for the last couple months and i am feel so good every morning i just get up i take so i need not to worry about what i have to wear today it's just the same thing so i think life becomes so easy. In the beginning, my community, it took me about one week. Now everybody knows in my community, oh, this fellow, he has only this one dress. So they know me. So there is no problem.

Everybody thinks they are fine. He's okay. Nothing wrong if you just want to wear that dress. Nothing wrong. And really life has become fairly easy. I have nothing to worry about what what i have to wear tomorrow because i know okay so starting a small thing really makes a lot of difference so i'm starting doing these things instead of eating all the time i just say oh

yeah i will eat fixed time because there is another thing that is coming up that if you want to live longer you'll have to eat less. The less you eat the longer your life is because our eating habits are so bad. We keep eating all the time and don't do any physical exercise. Now I start worrying about little bit about all these things. Are you, I believe I'm right when I say that you also are vegetarian or? You see, Jainism, because Jainism believe that every living being has a soul, so you don't want to kill anything. So Jainism cannot eat meat. So Jains are vegetarian. Okay. But they do take dairy products but now we start telling them that even dairy products you are causing harm to animals the way the animals are raised the environment is so bad so some I would say probably five or ten percent gents at least in in the US are now vegan. I'm vegan but I became vegan only

the last three four years. Okay. I have little bit thing there because when I go out yeah that's hard then I say okay suppose I go to my sister's place and sister some something in in the food which has dairy product I don't really I said okay today at this hour I'm not I'm vegetarian I'm not vegan so I'm not very strict vegan that I won't do anything at home I'm vegan yeah I'm a little flexible in this yeah well I mean like wonder if there was like a really good bowl of ice cream in front of you? Your niece made or something special for you. Yeah. Yeah.

That's the thing. Yeah. Because I was in India last month and I was there. So everybody there eat dairy products. And when I go there, they serve me something to make a special thing for me it's kind of it I said no don't you need not to make today I am not vegan. So that's been like an involving thing because the mass production you'd see how it would be okay if you had a cow and you

were just you know yeah right but I mean gotten out of control that it is abusive inside. I wanted to ask you, where did the name Jainism come from? And what does it mean? Okay, you see, according to Jainism, they say the word, Jainism came word from Jina, J-I-N-A. Okay. Jina. Jina means the fellow who has conquered his desires these attachment and aversion

so he really didn't have any desires didn't have like and dislike soul became pure soul pure so that's the word jina is i think is Prakritik again this language three languages Sanskrit Prakritik and Pali in Prakritik Jinnah is the word who has conquered his desires okay was he a person yeah yeah yeah the Mahavira was the person yes and according to Jainism, every person, every living being has same identical soul. Souls are no different. The only thing, every living being is carrying different amount of karmic debt. You are carrying karmic debt. I am carrying karmic debt.

The more karmic debt you carry, the worse you are. So if I die with very large karmic debt i am positive that i will born as an insect but if i die with a less karmic debt chances are that i will be born again as a human being so gen is yeah this karmic debt is the most important thing and everybody every living all these plant life everybody has same soul and every soul can become pure soul so everybody just get rid of this karmic debt

and so earlier you get rid of the karmic debt earlier you will get the inner peace and then you need not to worry about so this the whole idea so you wrote you wrote this book and you tell the story of an American student that you had. I feel like I'm the American student right now.

You are just full of wisdom and I appreciate it. You taking the time to share all of this wisdom with me. But how can one work on their karmic debt? What would be an example of someone who I don't know I mean how do you even know that you have it in your current life and if you do discover that you feel like you have a lot or can you even know yeah but you see that's what I'm saying now my motto is live with less. That's the thing. And if I keep controlling my desire requirements, I am definitely reducing my karmic debt. So in order to reduce my karmic debt, I have to draw a line that I don't want wealth beyond this limit. The problem is when i got a job i was happy i got but then i was getting

certain amount but it was never enough so once i got that amount i wanted more then i got more my salary increased but i want more so that thing you keep wanting more, more, more, more. There is no end to it. The better is that you start drawing this line. OK, once I get this that much, then I don't want to really care for more. So that's the starting point. And once you go there, then you start reducing your requirement. And as you go to the requirement, then you are in the right direction. And eventually then definitely you can see

the less desires you have, less requirements you will have. More desire, you will need more, more, more, more. Most people can relate that when you clean up a room and you get rid of stuff and send it to the goodwill, not only does the space feel better but you feel better you feel this freedom from the stuff from the attachment of the stuff exactly so you're making space um you're physical and also within exactly i couldn't say anything better. That's the way you need to go. Well, I just heard it from you. You said it.

So one other thing. So who said, was it the Dalai Lama or was it Buddha who said attachment is the root to all suffering? Yes. Yeah. It is from Buddha. And because I just told you that these two fellow Mahavira and Buddha, they were contemporary. They agreed certain points, but certain points, of course, they didn't agree. Yeah, it's okay. In Jainism, we go a little bit extra step to reduce our requirement. Buddhists, they don't need, they think, no, you need not to reduce your requirement that much. Jainism is a little bit more stringent in rules. Like I've heard of, maybe this, you know, we're in America, so we see, you know, whatever they want us to say, but I actually saw one time that someone was actually taking a broom and actually sweeping in front of them so that they wouldn't step on insect.

Yeah, this is yeah. So Jain monks, they carry a broom, all Jain monks. And so they are very careful when they walk, when they sit down, everything. They use their brooms to make sure they don't kill anybody. But in Jainism also there is one one sect, they don't even wear clothes, they are naked. Our monks in one group, they are naked. They don't have anything. They don't have nothing. Yeah. So there are about 500 Jain monks in India, which are naked, they live in society, they live in society, they live there. Because the society, somebody has to feed them, because they don't have anything,

nothing. Naked, they sleep on the floor, they sleep on the floor, and they just eat only once a day, they drink only once a day. And so somebody has soap and so you can see then they have no requirement. Their requirement is just one meal per day. That's the only requirement they have. So the society, Jain society provide them one meal a day. They do that whatever they want to do. So Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Our faith goes to that extreme that eventually you don't own anything. Wow, I get it.

So they are really truly freeing themselves of all karma because they would like to in their next probability be pureness and be one with yeah but again one is to be careful externally they are doing those things internally is very important why you are naked and why you are eating one time a day if you are trying to impress somebody or you want to get fame or that is not a good intention. And the way you are doing, you know, I have to do how to make your soul pure soul, that's the

purpose, yeah then you're doing very good. So one has to be careful that this moha is very important and I think I know definitely there are some monks which has very little moha and I think they are doing pretty good but I would say one has to be little careful there are still some monks which have not really reached that stage of moha they still need to work a little bit more so what I'm hearing though that little more may be ego yeah exactly this more one of the component of moha is ego okay as long as you relate your yourself to your body not your soul that is ego because ego is basically telling you oh no you are just body don't worry about soul yeah and so we relate everything this what we call self self means my body is self but the self is different than body and that ego comes in there so yeah that's it so what has to take care

of if ego first that you start believing in soul you need your body but soul is more important than body that's the important thing so what's interesting is like the cathars and and you know i think actually several groups that came off of ancient mystery schools they believed that we were stuck in this body and so they didn't want to procreate and the goal was to free yourself from this body you know from having to keep doing this body and and then the ultimate you know would be to become pure right which which is the word cathar so it's interesting how there are many similarities around all of the world that have core beliefs

like intention right so what i'm getting from you intention and impermanence yeah but yeah again i think i would just go to this word moha in my book because moha is basically the thing and Moa includes two things. Ego. Okay. Yeah. One component is ego. And second component is negative passions, negative passions, anger,

greed, deceit, all these things. So these two are very important. You shouldn't really, this attachment and aversion is the main problem. You shouldn't get attached to anything. People?

Yeah, you see, attachment always creates problems. I mean, because I always feel that if I'm attached too much to people, that when they begin to grow and when they begin to even transfer into the next life or whatever, wherever they're going, if we are so attached that we are so devastated, I've seen this in a lot of people. Yeah, so that's what I'm saying. So you see, initially, there can be two kinds of attachment. One, attachment to good things, to help somebody is attachment. But again, eventually, that helping somebody also can create some problem so eventually even helping

you need to reach a stage where that attachment is also gone though this is good for those people but again regarding your karmic debt because yeah karmic debt will be there so the karmic death will be there. So the karmic death becomes zero, then you'll see you won't have any attachment or aversion. You know, we talked to a lot of people and I help a lot of people. And a lot of times people come to awakening through pain. They're stripped where all that is left, right, is the soul, you know,

but they had to go a lot to get there. So, you know, when you see someone, I've had people, you know but they had to go a lot to get there so you know when you see someone I've had people you know who say my god like what did I do in my past life that was so bad that I have to go through all of these things but then they reach a point where they are the most peaceful so part of the journey yeah yeah definitely I think once people are in pain I consider this an opportunity to learn those people who never had pain they really didn't get a chance to learn anything they lived a very happy life and they never thought about anything else but those who are in pain they at least they give them a chance to think about why you have so much pain

and that kind of a thinking going back and understanding what the life means then that they oh yeah so then they try to understand what what's going on and they try to modify their actions and that's what we want to do basically once they understand oh because this karmic debt i carry is the problem and i have to reduce this karmic debt and once they understand oh because this karmic debt i carry is the problem and i have to reduce this karmic debt and once they understand this the idea is to reduce karmic debt and then they move in the right direction and then they will eventually find one day oh yeah now i feel much better than what i used to do and that's the whole idea it's basically so i would say yeah did you have to go through a lot

of your own personal um karmic debt in this life? Yes I think the reason somehow I don't know why I have this notion that I have done some actions which I shouldn't have done. And my feeling is that I collected some large karmic debt doing those actions. And if I want to be born as a human being, I have to somehow reduce my karmic debt. And so for the last few months and my remaining life, I decided that the only way I can reduce my karmic debt, that I control my desires or not. So I start living with this motto that try to live with less. And I think I'm gradually, I'm hoping the next few years, I will be able to reduce my karmic debt so that at least there is a

good possibility I will be born as a human being. So I yeah I am I definitely at least last few months have been thinking a lot about it and I'm changing my thinking and living style and hopefully if I talk to you next year, I can tell you that whether I have reached that stage or not, I'm going back to my previous life. So I think it's too early to tell which, but right now I'm definitely trying to reduce my karmic debts. Is this something you were taught as a child or did you come into this as an adult? You see, when I came to the US at that time, nobody knew what karma here. I'm talking about I came in 67, 55 years ago. And very few people knew the word karma.

They didn't know what I'm talking about. So they asked me, what is this karma you're talking about why you are vegetarian why you don't eat these things so it took me a time to really because I was raised in that atmosphere but I didn't know why I was doing those things but then I start reading and once I start

reading I have more questions than I was able to solve so I had so many questions in karma doctrine. So it forced me to really work, took an early retirement because in my job, there was no age I could have worked longer. But then I wanted to work on karma. So I took retired in 2003. So I'm already 19 years in retirement. And during the last life like I have been working reading

and writing a lot and I learned a lot about this karma doctrine and now I know that even in my gen is I don't think every action every consequence is covered by karma doctrine, not... Suppose you have an accident or you have a flood or fire or earthquake. That's not controlled by karma. But people somehow believe they try to relate everything to karma doctrine. So I'm trying to tell them that no, everything is not controlled by karma. There are only certain consequences which are controlled by karma and certain consequences are not like what you can control when you can't control the weather yes and now it's time for break that shit down

my message is basically if try to learn to live with less because this world is going in the wrong direction if everybody wants more more more there is no way this earth resources are finite resources and you simply cannot really keep consuming and without hurting the earth so there is only way one way for survival. I think there is no other option. Everybody has to start living with less. And once we decide, oh, yeah, that's the way we want to go, just live with less, I think things will improve by itself.

So the message I want to convey to everyone, just try to live with less rather than get more and more and more and that's the main problem yes that's a great message to start out 2023 you know it seems like the younger generation they are more yeah i think i have some hope with younger generation, I'm sure. Hi, generation. We were spoiled. Now you've inspired me to go in and donate some more things today to someone else who wants more. Sipash, you have been just a blessing. I've really enjoyed our conversation very much.

Can you tell our listeners where they can buy your book, The Path to Inner Peace, Mastering Karma, which I think you've demonstrated very well here in this interview, and tell our listeners where they could find you? Oh, I think send an email message and I'm eager to answer the question because the only way we can learn from each other is by asking questions. So they can write me anytime and of course my book is available on amazon or this barnes and novels i will put the links to everything in the show notes so that everyone will have that thank you very much thank you thanks so much

thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.