is it the same soul who moves from one body to another?
Yes. According to Jain Dharma, it is the same soul (jīva) that goes from one body to another.
A few key points in very simple words:
- Soul is eternal (shāshvat)
- The soul never dies and is never destroyed. - Only the body changes, like changing clothes.
- What changes?
- Body (śarīr) - Place of birth (gati – heaven, hell, human, animal, etc.) - Form, name, relations, language, etc. These all keep changing from life to life.
- What remains the same?
- The individual soul (jīva) remains the same entity. - It continuously carries its karma with it from one birth to another. - Because of its own karma, the same soul takes different births.
- Example (like Jain Acharyas give)
- One person is a child, then adult, then old – the body keeps changing, but it is the same person. - In the same way, from life to life, the external form changes, but the soul is one and the same.
- Why we don’t remember past lives?
- Because of knowledge-obscuring karma (jñānāvaraṇīya karma). - This karma covers our true knowledge, so we forget previous births, but forgetting does not mean the soul has changed.
So, in Jainism, the traveller is the same soul, only the vehicles (different bodies) keep changing due to its own karma.