A Jaina Perspective*

WORLDVIEWS

Worldviews 17 (2013) 77–88 brill.com/wo

Ethics of Synthetic Life: A Jaina Perspective*

Christopher Key Chapple Loyola Marymount University 1 LMU Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90045, USA [email protected]

Abstract Many Western philosophers, from Aristotle through Descartes and even Collingwood and Whitehead, have regarded the material world to be largely inert and subject to human intervention. The modern period has yielded more nuanced definitions of nature, seeing the process of life as self-generating and self-sustaining. The Jaina worldview, dating from the first several centuries before the common era, has developed an elaborate biological schematic that attributes sentience and hence soul to even the elements of earth, water, fire, and air. They also developed a sophisticated ethical response to the “livingness” of things. The Jaina attitudes toward synthetic life are explored at the end of the paper, suggesting that even engineered cells would nonetheless possess the qualities of life that must be valued and protected.

Keywords synthetic life; Jainism; soul; sentience; nature

The issue of synthetic life raises many questions of an ethical nature. In today’s global reality, it is important to engage all ethical issues through a cross-cultural approach. The Jaina tradition, rather uniquely among the world’s religions, has developed a distinctive definition of life that merits consideration in light of this topic, particularly because of the long legacy of a commitment to non-violence that has accompanied Jaina beliefs and practices. This essay will begin with a cursory exploration of select European and American philosophical definitions of life from classical and modern and contemporary thinkers. The Jaina worldview in regard to life will then be explained, with a focus on the Jaina advocacy of vegetarianism as an

*) This paper was written for a workshop that has been supported by the SYBHEL project: Synthetic Biology for Human Health: Ethical and Legal Issues (SiS-2008-1.1.2.1-230401; a project funded under the European Commission’s Science in Society Programme of Framework Programme 7). © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI 10.1163/15685357-01701007

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1. General Considerations: What Is Life?

In order to respond to the question of synthetic life, it is important to take into account various definitions of life. The Oxford Dictionary1 definition states: 1. the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death; living things and their activity; a particular type or aspect of people’s existence; vital- ity, vigor, or energy. 2. the existence of an individual human being or animal; a biography; either of the two states of a person’s existence separated by death (as in Christianity and some other religious traditions); any of a number of successive existences in which a soul is held to be reincarnated (as in Hinduism and some other religious traditions); a chance to live after narrowly escaping death (especially with reference to the nine lives traditionally attributed to cats). 3. (usually one’s life) the period between the birth and death of a living thing, especially a human being; the period during which something inanimate or abstract continues to exist, function, or be valid. In contemporary discourse, one generally associates life with the first sense of the word: “capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.” In his classic work on life, De Anima, Aristotle (384-222 B.C.E.) wrote that life consists of “intellect, sense, loco- motion, and motion of nutrition, growth and decay” (Aristotle 1907: xxxix). He attributed a soul to animals, but specified that the soul of animals is not immortal. Descartes and Bacon denied a soul or even sentience to animals, proclaiming they hold no thoughts or feelings. Aristotle noted that plants exhibited some qualities of life: nutrition, growth, and decay but did not attribute sentience to them. Life is not attributed by Aristotle (or the Western tradition in general) to such entities as rocks or bodies of water.

1) www.oxforddictionaries.com.

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The philosopher Robin Collingwood (1889–1943) states that, “the world is a world of dead matter, infinite in extent and permeated by movement throughout, but utterly devoid of ultimate qualitative differences and moved by uniform and purely quantitative forces” (Collingwood 1960: 112). Similarly, no less than process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861– 1947) writes, “nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, and colourless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly” (Whitehead 1997). Western thinkers, from Aristotle to Whitehead, make a clear distinction between inert, non-responsive material substance and beings who possess consciousness. Many other examples could be found, from Bacon to Descartes, of philosophers who hold an anthropocentric view that places primary value on the human and sees nature as being little more than a tool to be used for human comfort. In contrast, in the early Twentieth century, Carl G. Jung (1875-1961) ques- tioned the underlying narrowly defined assumptions regarding the nature of life when, as a young man, he mused “am I sitting on the stone or am I the stone he is sitting on?” (Jung 1961: 20). He considered animals to be kin, writing that, “We experience joy and sorrow, love and hate, hunger and thirst, fear and trust in common” and that “Animals were dear and faithful, unchanging and trustworthy” (Jung 1961: 67). He considered plants to be “the thoughts of God’s world” (Jung 1961: 67) and wrote that, “the woods were the place where I felt closest to . . . the incomprehensible meaning of life . . . and to its awe-inspiring workings” (Jung 1961: 68). Numerous other writings could be cited already from the Romantics, both European and American, who reveled in the joys of nature. Contemporary science has begun to introduce data that to a degree blurs the distinction between animate and inanimate matter. Vast quanti- ties of material that we now classify as “dead” in fact arose from the life process. Most spectacularly, the very air that cloaks our planet and allows life to flourish with its delicate balance of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and other gases, reached its critical mixture as aerobic bacteria over the course of billions of years digested mineral material, producing lime- stone, one of the earth’s more abundant rocks, and what became our life- nourishing atmosphere. The first speculations in this area were set forth by Vernadsky (1863-1945), the father of bio-geochemistry, who posited a link between the formation of the earth and the processes of life. James Lovelock (b.1919) advanced this work, noting that: The air we breathe, the oceans and the rocks are all either direct products of living organisms [think of the chalk cliffs of Dover, just one gigantic pile of shells] or else they have been greatly modified by their presence, and this even

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includes the igneous rocks coming from volcanoes. Indeed, organisms are not just adapting to a dead world determined by physics and chemistry alone, they live within a world that is the breath and the bones and the blood of their ancestors and they themselves are now sustaining (Lovelock 1988: 38). Contemporary ecological insights into the origins and supportive connec- tions amongst life forms similarly provide a much-expanded sense of the universe. In the words of Thomas Berry (1914-2009), the universe may thus be seen as a “communion of subjects, not a collection of objects” (Berry 2006: 17). Instances abound, from American Romantic poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) to Astrophysicist Carl Sagan (1934-1996), of the mysterious insights that can be found in the workings of nature, even amongst those aspects of nature that are considered inert and non-sentient. These few examples of nature-friendly attitudes are cited to exemplify the transition from a human-centered to a nature centered orientation within the modern world advocated by environmental thinkers. This move from classical anthropocentric to more bio-centric or nature centered views has recently been complicated by emerging technologies, such as genetic engineering, that allow hitherto unknown manipulations of life. As noted in the introduction to this issue of Worldviews by Anna Deplazes, modern science has started to blur to boundary between “natural” and synthesized forms of life. Synthetic biology can be defined in at least four ways, some of which open the possibility that life can be manipu- lated and organized in such a way that new forms of life might be known. Synthetic life introduces the notion that smaller units of life within existing life forms and the relationships between these various components must be taken into account as holding new possibilities for life. The concern for overall organizational patterning of constituent parts of life indicates the need for complex relational thinking in regard to defining the nature of life. Aristotle and even Whitehead were not pre-disposed to think of life in this holistic sense, whereas more poetic and systems-oriented thinkers such as Whitman, Berry, and Jung would have the capacity to envision the smaller (chemical) and organizational (strings of nucleotides) challenges pre- sented by synthetic life. Many of the articles in this special volume discuss the mechanics of manipulating life on the cellular and sub-cellular level. As we will see, the discourse of Jainism includes this possibility, particularly in its discussions of nigoda or microbial life forms. However, Jainism also regards life some- what poetically and expansively, suggesting that its mark can be found in things larger than their atomistic individualized forms. As we turn now to Jainism from ancient, medieval, modern and emerging contemporary

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Western views of life, we will discover divergences from the classical idea that life can only be found in animate, complex organisms. In many ways, Jainism finds resonance with the more relational ideas found in the more poetic thinkers mentioned above. Its definitions of life, as we will see in detail below, suggest that the possibility of synthetic life might raise different sets of ethical issues within Jainism.

2. The Jaina Worldview: Life Abounds

The Jaina worldview considers the universe to be pervaded with countless life forms (jiva) that have not been created and can ever be destroyed. These jivas have endured since time without beginning, taking shape as they move from one existence to the next in a process called samsara. Their particular form is determined by karmas that have accrued and attached to the jiva due to the qualities of behaviors in which the jiva has engaged. Jainism posits a complex relationship between an existing, real entity called jiva or soul, which contains consciousness, and particles of non-living matter (pudgala) to which it becomes attached and bound, taking myriad forms. Jainism sets forth six categories to account for the reality and process of life: soul (jiva), inert material (pudgala, anu, karma), space (akasha), time (kala), rest (adharma), and movement (dharma) (Jaini 1979: 97-106). Mahavira, the founder of what is now modern Jainism, lived in the fifth century before the common-era. He renewed a faith established by Parshvanatha approximately three hundred years earlier, which itself was said to have been built on prior teachings. Mahavira articulated a form of proto-science. Through close observation of the natural world, he declared that life can be found in the bodies of the earth, including rocks, in drops of water, in sparks of fire, and in the wafting of the wind. He affirmed not only the presence of life in what might be considered by classical Western science to be inanimate objects. He also asserted that all beings desire to live, and he put forward the ethical claim that all beings have a right to live: “All beings are fond life, like pleasure, hate pain, shun destruction, like life, long to live. To all life is dear” (Jacobi 1968, Acaranga Sutra I:2.3). He advocated that all violence must be avoided: “One should not kill, nor cause others to kill, nor consent to the killing of others” (Jacobi 1968, Acaranga Sutra I:3.2). Jainas throughout history have advocated against forms of violence, including the killing of animals and the creation of weaponry. Similar to Hinduism and Buddhism, Jainism proclaims that the ultimate goal and purpose of human existence is to set oneself free, to attain

Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 10:56:35PM via free access 82 C.K. Chapple / Worldviews 17 (2013) 77–88 moksha, nirvana, or kevala. For Hindus this might involve rituals, death in Banaras, and or a variety of Yoga practices. Buddhists require entry into the eightfold path, culminating in rarefied states of meditation. For Jainas, liberation entails the assiduous commitment to do no intentional harm to any of the myriad forms of life that fill the universe. Hence, Jaina monks and nuns bind themselves to a lifestyle that eschews violence, vowing to never eat meat, to never step upon insect, to never talk harshly. The Jaina lifestyle allows for inevitable violence committed against one-sensed beings in sim- ple acts such as walking upon the earth, eating vegetables, and breathing air. At times, observant Jaina will even abandon eating certain vegetables to further minimize the possibility of committing harm. However, harm to more complex forms of life is prohibited due to the obscuring karmic particles that will consequently accrue with each act of violence, eclipsing the energy, consciousness and bliss of the jiva. In the thousand years following Mahavira’s initial teachings, Jaina schol- ars articulated the forms and lifespans of numerous jivas so that the practi- tioners of the faith would be equipped to enter a lifestyle, monastic or lay, that would be conducive to eliminating the karmas that bind and obscure the jiva when one commits acts of violence. The jiva or soul or life force of rocks is said to live a maximum 22,000 years before migrating to a new body. The soul of an insect lives a few weeks, bacteria (nigoda) a few minutes, humans as long as one hundred years. Furthermore, the early Jaina biolo- gists grouped these beings in a hierarchy according to the number of senses possessed. All earth bodies, including soil, rocks, and things constructed of metal and polymer are said to possess the sense of touch, as do plants and bacteria. Worms add the sense of taste. Bugs add smell; flying insects add sight. Mammals, reptiles, and birds add the sense of hearing and the capacity to think. The Jaina thinkers postulated the existence of 84 million different species of life and developed strategies to avoid harm to each. Umasvati (ca. 500 C.E.) systematized Jaina thought in a series of apho- risms known as the Tattvartha Sutra. From this text we can see careful attention given to assessing life in all its various forms: The worldly souls fall into two groups, souls that possess a mind and souls that do not. The worldly souls are further classified as mobile and immobile beings. The earth-bodied, water-bodied and plant-bodied souls are immobile beings. Fire and air, as well as those with two or more senses, are mobile beings (Tatia: 40-42). Hearkening back to Aristotle, we see a similar concern for sentience and movement. However, whereas Aristotle and Western tradition in general

Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 10:56:35PM via free access C.K. Chapple / Worldviews 17 (2013) 77–88 83 would not attribute sentience to the elements of earth, water, fire, or air, nor to plants, Jainism attributes soul or sentience and hence life itself to all these entities. The question for Jainism is not who created life; life has always been present and can never be destroyed. The question for Jainism is how to advance the jiva toward a state of liberation through the gradual release of all karmas. In this final state, one is said to rise up to the limits of the universe, metaphorically referred to as an ascent to one’s own mountain peak, far beyond even the realms of heaven, from which one looks down and surveys all that lies below, without ever being enticed to take up the action or karma that drives the constant cycle of samsara.

3. Jaina Vegetarianism: The Ethical Non-Negotiable

From before the time of the Buddha, Jainas have advocated vegetarianism. Mahavira was very specific about the harm caused by eating animals’ flesh: Some slay animals for sacrificial purposes, some kill animals for the sake of their skin, some kill them for the sake of their flesh, some kill them for the sake of their blood; thus for the sake of their heart, their bile, the feathers in their tale, their tail, their big or small horns, their teeth, their tusks, their nails, their sinews, their bones; with a purpose or without a purpose. Some kill animals because they have been wounded by them, or are wounded, or will be wounded. The one who injures these animals does not comprehend and renounce the sinful acts; the one who does not injure these animals comprehends and renounces the sinful acts. A wise person should not act sinfully toward animals, or cause others to do so, nor allow others to act so (Jacobi 1968, Acaranga Sutra I:1.5-6). Mahavira taught scrupulous behavior to avoid harm to even insect forms of life, not allowing his followers to eat after dark for fear of ingesting bugs: If a monk or nun would eat or drink without inspecting the food and drink, he or she might hurt and displace or injure or kill all sorts of living beings (Jacobi 1968, Acaranga Sutra II:15:2). He also advocated a general shift of view away from seeing animals as food and toward a general appreciation of their inherent beauty and right to live: A monk or nun, seeing a man, a cow, a buffalo, deer, cattle, a bird, a snake, an aquatic animal of increased bulk, should not speak about them in this way: “He (or it) is fit, round, fit to be killed or cooked”; considering well, they should

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not use such [language, which is] sinful, blamable, rough, stinging, coarse, hard, leading to sins, to discords and factions, to grief and outrage, to destruction of living beings (Jacobi 1968, Acaranga Sutra II:4.2). By viewing animals as worthy of protection, Jaina philosophers set forth an ethical standard that can be instructive for assessing proper attitudes and approaches to life in any form, including, as we will see, synthetic forms. We now turn to the question of synthetic life. Given Jainism’s worldview that sees the emplacement of life in rocks, bodies of water, fire, and even air, and given its commitment to “do no harm” most famously through its advocacy of vegetarianism, how might Jainism respond to the issues of creating or synthesizing or rearranging forms of life?

4. The Challenge of Synthetic Life

Modern science has advanced to the point of being able not only to dissect and, hence, understand the various organs that allow the flourishing of complex forms of multi-cellular life but has also probed into the building blocks of cells themselves. With much fanfare, as described in the introduction to the volume, scientists are now experimenting with such techniques at DNA-based device construction, genome-driven cell engineering, and protocell creation. Many find these “advances” highly problematic. O’Malley and others have cited the prescient work of theoretical biologist Robert Rosen (1934-1998), who noted that “reductively mechanistic non-complex understandings of biology would ‘literally kill life’” (O’Malley et al, 2007: 63). By exploring a non-Western view on life, some interesting possible alternate responses might emerge, as suggested in the following exploration of how the Jainas might regard synthetic life. Living organisms, according to Jainism, are distinguished by the number of senses that they contain. Living organisms include elemental aspects of reality, including the crystalline structures of minerals and soil, droplets and larger bodies of water, fire in its various forms, as well as the many microbes and small insects that dwell in the air. Each possesses consciousness. A chair can feel the weight of its occupant. A keyboard can feel the touch of its typist. A worm can discern the taste of different qualities of soil and detritus. A butterfly responds to the color of the flower. Each living organism possesses a common feature: a desire to live. According to Jainism, the root components of life can be rearranged. The jiva has the capacity to adapt its size to fill the material aspects of the atoms

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(anu) that compose an individual form. Hence, the jiva can be microscopic or could be as large as a whale. The atoms may be reconfigured and shaped. The jiva will adapt itself and move into the form. Given the parameters and assumptions of their worldview, the Jainas would most likely render the following assessments: - A protocell would possess the sense of touch and hence be alive. - An engineered bacterium would not differ from other bacteria (nigoda). - A minimal organism with a synthetic genome would possess life. - An ALife computer program would possess life by virtue of its reli- ance on mineral materials, derived from the earth, to sustain its oper- ations. The engagement of the program would also have an aspect of not being alive.

Karma, which generates the activities required for complex living, consists of particles (anu or pudgala) that encode past behaviors and govern cur- rent and future behavior. In conjunction with time (kala), rest (adharma), and movement (dharma), the other non-living categories of the Jaina universe, karma interacts with the jiva or soul or life-force to produce the unfolding of each particular manifestation of life. Karma provides impetus and, generally because it tends toward violence and hence results in an unending entanglement in the process of life, death, and rebirth, it must be subject to purification. Time and movement set the frame for the unfolding of the life process; karma and jiva repeatedly generate activities, with one life leading immediately to the next. The protocell, the engineered bacterium, and the minimal organism would each attract a jiva or soul consciousness that would possess the sense of touch. An artificial life array in the form of a computer program would draw from the time and movement aspects of Jaina physics, interacting with substance (pudgala or anu) that hosts the living entity (jiva). If the living entity is programmed to include other sense capabilities such as being responsive to odors, sights, and sounds, then the Jainas would see this entity, even in robotic form, as worthy of a greater level of attention and care than accorded to elemental or even plant realities. Elemental life that possesses the sense of touch, from the Jaina perspective, can presumably be found within every computer chip or particle of silicon. However, if Artificial Life replicates sensory and even cognition and thought processes, then its manifestations would war- rant deeper respect and protection. The question may be raised: Are there moral reasons against the synthe- sis of life?

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If pain is caused in the process of synthesizing life, it would not be acceptable to a Jaina, unless a far greater good could be gained. As Bernard Rollins has noted, attempts to create mice that carry painful diseases for the sake of research constitutes unwarranted cruelty with dubious benefit. He states unambiguously that, “No one may create a transgenic model of human genetic disease until they have provided a method for assuring that the animals do not suffer uncontrollable or long-term or lifetime pain” (Rollins 2000: 120). He gives the example of an attempt to create a mouse that suffers from Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, a genetic condition that causes extreme forms of self-mutilation. Jainas would not approve of introducing disease at the cellular level to animals that would cause them pain or suffering. Though not himself a Jaina, he shares a concern that intentional inflic- tion of pain to living beings is not ethical.

5. Conclusion

The human being has an extraordinary capacity for moral reasoning and for moral action. Rocks, rivers, forest fires, microbes, trees, and vegetables are generally not capable of controlling their actions. Higher life forms such as worms and insects and the various forms of animals know how to protect themselves, survive, and create offspring. Some animals, such as dolphins, demonstrate high capacities for empathy and moral behavior. According to Jainism, humans have been given the possibility of cultivating a lifestyle that seeks to enhance wellbeing through the systematic application of non- violent principles. Although the path of nonviolence is undertaken to advance one’s own jiva toward liberation, the benevolence generated by the practice of nonviolence benefits other beings. Padmanabh S. Jaini, in dis- cussing the related issue of Jainism and development, has noted “The potential benefits that could accrue from a proposed development project to alleviate suffering and improve the quality of one segment of society must be weighed against its negative impact on other, humans, as well as on animals, plants, earth, water, and air” (Jaini quoted in Chapple 2002: 151). The same process of multivalent assessment would apply to grappling with the pros and cons of creating synthetic life. The Jaina perspective offers a different look at the question of life. As noted by Vilas Sangave, “though violence (himsa) is unavoidable in the sus- tenance of life, Jainism, by rules of conduct, tries to limit it for essential purposes only” (Sangave 1997: 168). One might automatically assume that the Jaina theory of life would disapprove of synthetic life, claiming it to be manipulative and potentially harmful. However, if it can be established

Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 10:56:35PM via free access C.K. Chapple / Worldviews 17 (2013) 77–88 87 that the procedures that result in synthetic life do not produce pain and in fact result in a measurable benefit, then a Jaina might accept the idea that the technology of crafting synthetic life can be accepted if it improves the quality of life without causing disproportionate harm. Jaina lay persons, many of whom are involved with the pharmaceutical and bio-tech industry, might be positively inclined to engage in activities that experiment with a perhaps find technical applications for synthetic life. However, members of monastic orders, who take rigorous vows to minimize harm to life and do not participate in such worldly activities as scientific research, would avoid engaging in any “tampering” with life in any form, anticipating the pain that it would immediately and inevitably cause.

References

Aristotle. 1907. De Anima. R. D. Hicks (trans.). Cambridge: University Press. Lawrence A. Babb. 1996. Absent Lord: Ascetics and Kings in a Jain Ritual Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Berry, Thomas. 2006. Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on the Earth as Sacred Community. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. Chapple, Christopher (ed) 2002. Jainism and Ecology: Nonviolence in the Web of Life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Collingwood, Robin George. 1960. The Idea of Nature. Oxford University Press. Hall, Matthew. 2011. Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany. Albany: State University of New York Press. Jacobi, Hermann (trans.) Acaranga Sutra. Jaina Sutras: Part One: Akaranga Sutra, Kalpa Sutra. 1968. New York: Dover (first published at Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1884). Jaini, Padmanabh S. 1979. The Jaina Path of Purification. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jung, Carl Gustav. 1961. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Revised Edition. New York: Vintage Books. Lovelock, James. 1988. “The Gaia Hypothesis” in Gaia, the Thesis, the Mechanisms and the Implications. Peter Bunyard and Edward Goldsmith (eds) Cornwall, U.K.: Wadebridge Ecological Centre. Yuvacharya Mahapragya. Nonviolence and Its Many Aspects. Second Edition. R. P. Bhattnagar, trans. Ladnun: Jain Vishva Bharati. O’Malley, Maureen A., Alexander Powell, Jonathan F Davies, and Jane Calvert. 2007. “Knowledge-making Distinctions in Synthetic Biology,” BioEssays 30.1. Hoboken: Wiley Publications, 57-65. Rollin, Bernard E. 2000. “Social Ethics, Animal Suffering, and the Creation of Transgenic Animal Models of Human Genetic Disease” in A. Lanny Kraus and David Renquist (eds) Bioethics and the Use of Laboratory Animals: Ethics in Theory and Practice. A Publication of the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine. Dubuque, Iowa: Gregory C. Benoit Publishing, 109-122. Sangave, Vilas. 1997. Jaina Religion and Community.Long Beach, CA: Long Beach Publications. Tatia, Nathmal (trans.). 1994. That Which Is: Tattvartha Sutra, A Classic Jain Manual for Understanding the True Nature of Reality. San Francisco: HarperCollins. Whitehead, Alfred N. 1997. Science and the Modern World, Free Press.

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Appendix. Communication with Dr. Shugan Jain, founder and director of the International School for Jain Studies, New Delhi, May 2010

Chapple:

Jivas thrive in abundance throughout our environments, large and small. Jivas are thriving certainly in the mites and microbes that sit upon my keyboard. Is there also a notion that, for instance, even when a tree is chopped down and crafted into buckets and wheels and chairs, that individual jivas will conform their energy to take the shape of the item that has been crafted? Would it be logical to assume that any regrouping of molecules in the laboratory would similarly be occupied by a jiva, albeit in this instance the equivalent of a nigoda and hence possessing the sense of touch?

Shugan Jain:

You are right that Jains consider this universe to be filled with both jivas of one-sense (air, water, earth, fire and vegetation bodies) as well as matter particles. Both interact with each other and get attracted to each other. How ever the jiva always remains a jiva and the matter particles stay as matter. When someone tries to synthesize elements and produce a living cell or DNA, then Jains can support this invention as the living beings in the vicinity where the experiment is being performed or elsewhere can die and accept a new body with the matters being synthesized. Jains accordingly talk of many forms of birth, e.g. spontaneously by accepting matter particles from the environment, or from uterus or in special beds (without the union of male and female sperm and egg). The transfer of empirical soul from one body to the other body takes place in a small fraction of second as the empirical soul cannot stay without a body for even the smallest part of time. So the jivas adopt new bodies depending on their body making karma (nama karma) by accepting matter (called audarika or matter body form- ing particles or vaikriya matter particles for bodies of celestial and hellish beings). It is possible to be born as vegetation, or other bodied living beings. Nama karma has as its maximum number of sub types (93) and there are 84 million different types of living beings possible.

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