Page 130 - Faith Personified

It is not destiny but the nature of karmas. Inauspicious karmas
lead to sorrow and auspicious karmas lead to happiness.

Sins lead to sorrow,

Religion leads to joy.
It is the nature of karmas to provide you with happiness or
sorrow but destiny creates circumstances that favours your
karmas.

For Example, It was destiny that Samraditya met Agnisharma

for almost 9 consecutive births; the trials he had to face were
because of his own inauspicious karmas but the fact that the
pain was inflicted by the hands of Agnisharma alone was
once again destiny.

Q. But isn’t it destiny which inspires you to make specific
efforts that lead to the origin of karmas?

Ans. No, then the remaining factors – Karma, our efforts,
etc. will become useless. Destiny would be the sole factor!

This will abolish the Jain concept that any act/work is affected
by 5 factors. This concept denotes that destiny, time, nature,
karma and our efforts are all independent factors. It is very
possible that for a specific act, some particular factor plays a
role more prominent than the rest.

Destiny and Efforts

We just described how previous good or bad karmas are
responsible for the external adversities that we face and not
destiny. Similarly our positives and negative efforts

116