form, his learning, his family, his fame, his strength, his success in commerce, or his austerities, he is laying up the inauspicious Gotra karma which will surely cause him to be born in a low-caste and despised family in the next life; if on the other hand he sternly curbs his conceit and that constant criticizing and censuring of others which is the surest proof of pride, and also in every possible way takes care of animals, then birth into a high caste will be his reward.
viii. Antarāya karma.All of us have been bewildered by the ineffectiveness of some people; they seem to have everything in their favour and yet they muddle away every opportunity that life offers them. The Jaina find the answer to this puzzle in their belief in Antarāya karma, the karma that always hinders. If we are wealthy and so generous that we long to revel in the keen joy of giving, and yet never do give, we know that in a past life we accumulated the karma that prevents giving (Dānāntarāya karma). If we realize the profit that is sure to follow a certain course of action, and yet we never act on this realization, we must have accumulated Lābhāntarāya karma. If in spite of our wealth we never really enjoy our possessions or our luxuries, either continuously or even for an instant, the cause is either Bhogāntarāya or Upabhogāntarāya karma. The last hindering karma (Vīryāntarāya karma) prevents our using our will or our bodily strength as we should like to do. The convenience of this belief is obvious. Life in India is for Indians, as it is for Europeans, a constant and unending fight against slackness, in which Europeans have the advantage of periodic visits to a cool climate to brace their moral as well as their physical fibre, and have also a tonic belief in the dignity of work and the gospel of exercise. Jaina have none of these advantages, but recline on the enervating doctrine of Antarāya karma, which provides those of them who are lazy with an excuse for every sort of inertia.
