Sûtra-Krita (Prakrit: Sûya-Gad, “Aphoristic Composition”), giving out the fundamental teachings of Jainism relative to the monastic life, and combating non-Jaina doctrines;
Sthâna (Prakrit: Thân, “Receptacle”), consisting of a detailed enumeration of the key principles of Jainism;
Samavâya (“Combination”), continuing the exposition of the Sthâna-Anga;
Bhagavatî-Vyâkhyâ-Prajnapti (Prakrit: Bhagavaî-Viyâha-Pannatti, “Exposition of Explanations”), furnishing through its recorded dialogues a vivid picture of Mahâvîra’s life and his times; this voluminous work also contains information about Gosala, an ascetic who lived with Mahâvîra for six years and who, as leader of the Ajîvika school, appears to have attracted a large following; this work is of particular importance to the Shvetâmbara sect;
Jnâtri-Dharma-Kathâ (Prakrit: Nâyâ- Dhamma-Kahâo, “Stories of Knowledge and Morality”), consisting of legendary accounts that illustrate Jaina doctrines;
Upâsaka-Dashâ (Prakrit: Uvâsaga-Dasâo, “Ten [Chapters] on Lay Followers”), containing legends of saintly men and women from among the laity;
Antakrid-Dashâ (Prakrit: Amta-Gada-Dasâo, “Ten [Chapters] on End-Makers”), consisting of legends of ten ascetics who won enlightenment and brought an end to the cycle of rebirths;
Anuttara-Upapâtika-Dashâ (Prakrit: Anuttarovavâiya-Dasâo, “Ten [Chapters] on the Highest Risers”), containing legends of saints who ascended to the highest heavenly worlds;
Prashna-Vyâkarana (Prakrit: Panhâ-Vâgaranâim, “Questions and Explanations”), comprising discussions of prescriptions and proscriptions from the Jaina code of ethics;
Vipâka-Shruta (Prakrit: Vivâga-Suyam, “Revelation on Ripening”), containing legends that illustrate the karmic consequences of good and evil acts;
Drishti-Vâda (Prakrit: Ditthi-Vâya, “Instruction about Views”), comprising echoes of the fourteen lost Pûrvas.
The individual works of the Jaina canon are often referred to as gamas. Occasionally the number of canonical scriptures is reckoned to be eighty-four, and thirty-six Nigamas, which are Upanishad-like works, are also mentioned.
All these writings, which parallel the Vedic revelation (shruti), were followed by a copious and rich exegetical literature. That explanatory literature comprises ten original treatises, known as the Nijjuttis in Prakrit and Niryuktis in Sanskrit. These have their own major commentaries (Prakrit: bhâsa, Sanskrit: bhâshya), elucidations (Prakrit: chunni, Sanskrit: cûrnî), and glosses (Prakrit/Sanskrit: tîkâ). In addition, the sacred literature of the Jainas comprises Purânas (sacred encyclopedias) and Câritras (hagiographies), as well as a host of other instructional works.
There are also numerous extra-canonical works, such as the Tarangâvatî, a Prakrit poem composed by Padalipta Sûri, who is said to have cured King Murunda of Pataliputra of an incurable disease. An older work, dating back to perhaps 100 C.E., is the Pauma-Carîya of Vimala, the Jaina version of the Hindu Râmâyana. Around the same time lived Umâsvâti, the greatest philosopher of Jainism and author of the famous Tattva-Artha-(Adhigama-)Sûtra.4 His influence within Jainism is comparable to the influence of Shankara within Hinduism.
After Umâsvâti, the most renowned Jaina philosopher, comes the Digambara scholar Kunda Kunda, whose most popular work is the Samâyâ-Sâra. He lived probably in the fourth century C.E. In the eighth century, we have Haribhadra Sûri—philosopher, logician, and artist in one person—who reputedly wrote no fewer than 1,440 works. These include several texts on Yoga, notably the Yoga-Bindu and the Yoga-Drishti-Samuccaya (an excerpt from which is given as Source Reading 7). Several centuries later lived Hemacandra, the author of the Yoga Shâstra, which is also known as the Adhyâtma- Upanishad. Furthermore, the Jainas have composed numerous works on logic—an area where they made important contributions to Indian philosophy.
The canon of the Digambaras was created in the early post-Christian centuries. Although the Digambaras rejected the Shvetâmbara canon, they nevertheless quoted from it. Their own canon consists of two parts, the so-called Karma-Prâbhrita and the Kashâya-Prâbhrita. The former is also known as Shat-Khânda-gama,5 or “Scripture in Six Parts.” It has an extensive commentary by Vîrasena, entitled Dhavâlâ, or “The Luminous,” completed in 816 C.E. The Kashâya-Prâbhrita runs into a mere 233 verses, composed by Gunadhâra, and also has a comprehensive commentary by Vîrasena and his disciple Jinasena.
The Digambaras also have a secondary canon, which was created in the sixth or seventh century C.E. It is divided into four subjects, which the Digambaras refer to as their “four Vedas”: history, cosmography, philosophy, and ethics. A well-known extra-canonical work of the Digambaras is the Svâmi-Kârttikeya-Anuprekshâ, which deals with the twelve meditations (anuprekshâ) recommended for both monks and the laity. It belongs to the tenth century C.E.
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the doctrinal world of Jainism is that, notwithstanding the scission into two sects, the differences between contending schools are minimal. In contrast to Buddhism, Jainism has succeeded in preserving its core teachings for well over two millennia. There never was a Jaina Mahâyâna, Vajrayâna, or Kâlacakrayâna. Jainism portrays in extremis the kind of continuity that historians have observed between the ancient Indus-Sârasvatî civilization and modern Indian culture.
As is apparent from the extent of the Jaina literature alone, Jainism prospered for many centuries, even though its rather stark asceticism prevented it from achieving the same success as the Buddha’s teaching. Then, in the thirteenth century, the Muslims put thousands of Jaina monks and nuns to the sword and destroyed their temples and libraries, and for a period of time severely impaired the vitality of Jaina culture. Today, Jainism is a minority religion in India but one that is by no means stagnant, as is evident from the Anuvrata movement initiated by Acarya Tulasi in Rajasthan in 1949. The movement’s name, “Small Vow,” is meant to suggest that even the minor vows of Jainism can bring about big changes. The history of Jainism thus continues to be an important lesson in the efficacy of vows in a life that revolves around spiritual rather than material values—an art that is all but forgotten in our Western society.
III. THE PATH OF PURIFICATION
The Power of Karma and Its Elimination through Morality and Meditation
Like Buddhism and Hinduism, Jaina spirituality is essentially a path to emancipation, or what is called “absolute knowledge” (kevâla-jnâna). That superlative condition is defined in terms of freedom from the impact of the law of moral causation, or karma. The doctrine of karma plays the same vital role in Jainism as it does in Hinduism and Buddhism. But the Jaina scholastics elaborated this doctrine more than any other. The underlying idea of karma is that the law of cause and effect applies also to the psychic or moral realm, so that a person’s actions or even volitions determine his or her destiny, both in the present lifetime and future lifetimes.
There is a parallel here to modern existentialism, which argues that we are what we are because of our past decisions, and that we are free to choose what we may become, and that therefore it is in our actions that we are most truly ourselves. Another and related point of contact between existentialist philosophy and the doctrine of karma is that both understand the human condition to be one of fear (or dread). Whereas the Indian spiritual traditions teach that this condition can be wholly transcended—in the moment of enlightenment or liberation—Western existentialism, despite its frequent metaphysical formulations, is seldom so optimistic. Thus, even the German philosopher and psychiatrist Karl Jaspers, who must be counted among the more metaphysical-minded existentialists, does not concede the possibility of radical transcendence. For him, the most we can hope to accomplish is the establishment of “communication from personality to personality,” so that “our relation to transcendence … becomes sensibly present in our encounter with the personal God.”6 From the Indian point of view, such an encounter still occurs within the conditional dimension of existence, that is to
say, it falls short of liberation or enlightenment, in which the human personality as well as the personal deity is utterly transcended.
The true essence of the human individual is the Self (âtman). The Jainas use the terms âtman and jîva interchangeably, but whereas the former refers to the transcendental nature, the latter is the Self held in captivity by its own karma-producing actions.
In Jainism the classification into eight primary types of karma is best known, but the Jaina scholastics distinguish up to 148 different forms of karmic activity:
karma concealing wisdom;
karma concealing right insight, thus preventing the acceptance of the Jaina code of moral conduct;
karma leading to the experience of pleasure and pain;
karma causing complete delusion;
karma determining the length of one’s life;
karma determining one’s particular social status;
karma determining one’s birth into a particular family;
karma that is generally obstructive.
From the point of view of its activity in time, karma is classified under three headings:
satta-karma, which has been accumulated in past existences; its Hindu equivalent is sancita-karma;
bandha-karma, which is produced in the present existence, but becomes effective only later; it corresponds to the Hindu notion of
udaya-karma, which is effective now; this is the same as the Hindu idea of prârabdha- karma.
Furthermore, all karma is divided into two essential categories—nikacita (that which must be experienced) and shithila (that which can be avoided through the practice of Yoga). Without the latter type, life would proceed along absolutely deterministic lines. But Jainism rejects fatalism, which was one of the main points of dispute between Mahâvîra and the Ajîvika philosopher Makkhali Gosala. Gosala maintained that human beings were under the complete control of destiny (niyati), which he saw as an impersonal cosmic principle. Mahâvîra, however, taught that there was free will and the possibility to change and even transcend one’s karmic fate. Throughout the existence of a particular animate being (jîva), karma is produced and experienced.
The Jainas conceive of karma as a kind of substance that can be generated, stored, and annihilated. The cycle of karma production and experience is interpreted in terms of an influx (âsrava) of karma, which needs to be stopped. For, as long as the inflow of karma continues, the being is bound to lifeless matter (ajîva-pudgala) and revolves continually in the wheel of repeated births and deaths. The concept of jîva comprises all animate entities, including the material elements such as water and fire. In this respect, the Jaina concept differs from the Vedântic notion of jîva, which is applied only to the self-conscious being.
“The sages declare that in the absence of pure experience, the suprasensuous supreme Absolute is not comprehensible even with a hundred scriptural reasons.”
-Jnâna-Sâra 203
Like the proponents of Sâmkhya, the Jainas believe in a plurality of ultimate or spiritual entities, the âtmans. These are, similar to the Sâmkhya purushâs or Self-monads, essentially infinite and pure Consciousness. But they deem themselves confined to a certain form or body. Their self-limitation, which is regarded as a form of contraction of consciousness, results from the impact of karma, and only through the reduction of karmic influences, and ultimately the total obliteration of karma, can the jîva’s consciousness be purified and transformed into the limitless transcendental Consciousness. As Hemacandra (1089–1172 C.E.) declares in his famous Yoga-Shâstra (4.112a):
Emancipation [results from] the dwindling of karma, and that is achieved through selfabsorption (âtma-dhyâna).
Acting as a receptacle of karma is the instrumental body or karmana-sharîra, which is the innermost of the five bodies of the human being. The remaining four are:
the physical human body (audarika-sharîra);
the transformation body (vaikriyâ-sharîra), which is the natural vehicle of the higher beings (i.e., deities) and which can be “acquired” by the ascetic who then is able to increase its size at will; perhaps the fantastic dimensions given for the bodies of the earlier teachers of Jainism can be explained as referring to their transformation bodies only;
the procurement body (âhâraka-sharîra), which can be temporarily created and detached from the physical body to be projected anywhere;
the fiery body (taijasa-sharîra), which is indestructible and survives death and without whose energy the lower three bodies could not operate; ascetics can use this body to bum objects.
This doctrine of the five bodies that are successively more subtle has its Hindu counterpart in the teaching of the Taittirîya-Upanishad mentioned in the previous chapter. But Jainism has developed its own distinct ideas about what some scholars have called subtle physiology.
According to a classification found in the Jaina canon, there are two types of animate entities: There are those who are trapped in the cosmos of dependence and suffering, called samsârins, and there are those who have escaped samsâra, the wheel of continual becoming; these are the siddhas or “perfected ones.” The latter are without spatial location and experience the unimaginable bliss of infinite Consciousness. One of their 108 characteristics is that they can assume any shape at will, and thus are masters of the universe.
The Seven Categories of Existence
The jîvas, or finite individuals, belong to the first of the seven basic categories known to Jainism. The second category is composed of the inanimate objects (ajîva). These comprise the formless dimensions of motility, space, and time, as well as the innumerable distinct forms that make up perceptible matter (pudgala). According to Jainism, which does not admit the existence of a supreme creator or deity, the whole creation is maintained by the interaction between the animate and the inanimate.
The third category, as already mentioned, is called influx (âsrava), which refers to the intake of karma, which pollutes the transcendental Consciousness to the point where it believes itself to be finite and associated, if not identical, with a physical body. Karma is attracted to a being by virtue of his or her mental and physical acts. This influx of karma is also given the name yoga in Jainism, which means the “union” of the transcendental Self with physical reality; that is, the contraction of the Self around a finite material conglomerate.
The fourth category is bondage (bandha), whose causes are false views, attachment, negligence, passion (kashâya), and the association (yoga) with the limited body-mind. Next comes the category of “warding off” (samvara), which is the process of preventing the generation of karma through proper moral conduct. The central virtue of the Jaina code of morals is nonharming (ahimsâ), which entails the prohibition of killing animate beings for any purpose, be it for food or sacrifice, and even the mere intention of hurting another being. Jainism originally recruited its members primarily from the aristocratic families and warrior (kshatriya) estate. However, the strict regulations about nonharming have forced the Jaina laity into merchant careers. Ethics forms the foundation of Jaina Yoga, and it is stated that no amount of austerity or meditative practice can lead to emancipation unless it is accompanied by the careful observance of the moral rules.
The sixth category is called “exhaustion” (nirjara) and refers to the complete elimination of karma in the highest forms of ecstasy (samâdhi), brought about by extreme penance. Such penance, especially the rigorous practice of nonharming (ahimsâ), not only stops the flow of karma but reverses all karmic effects. From this results, as the seventh category, the transcendental state of emancipation (moksha), or absolute knowledge. In the ancient câra-Anga-Sûtra (330–332), Mahâvîra declares about this state of perfect freedom:
All sounds recoil, where reason has no room, nor does the mind penetrate there. The liberated is not tall or short, round or triangular; he is neither black nor white; he is disembodied, without contact [with matter] … not female, male, or neuter. Though he perceives and knows, there is no [fitting] an
alogy [to describe his perception or knowledge]. His being is formless. There is no condition of the Unconditioned.
The transcendental Reality, or Self, is also known as the Lord (prabhu). In his Sanskrit work tma-Anushâsana (266), the ninth-century teacher Gunabhadra states:
The Lord is the unborn, indestructible, formless, happy, and wise Actor and Enjoyer, [who coincides with the size of] the body only, freed from impurity, [and who] having gone upward is immovable.
In Kunda Kunda’s Niyama-Sâra (43-46), authored in the sixth century C.E., we find the following reiteratively descriptive stanzas:
The Self (âtman) is free from punishment, without opposites, without me-sense (nirmama), impartite, without [objective] support, devoid of attachment, free from defects, free from delusion, and fearless.
The Self is free from contraction (nirgrantha), devoid of attachment, without blemish, free from all defects, without desire, free from anger, free from pride, and without lust.
Color, taste, smell, touch, male, female, male [or female] inclinations, etc., the [various kinds] of positions, and the [various types of] bodies—all these do not exist in the [transcendental] individual (jîva).
Know the [transcendental] individual to be tasteless, formless, without scent, unmanifest [but] conscious, unqualified, soundless, not recognizable by [any external] sign, and without describable location.
Kunda Kunda goes on to compare the true nature of the individuated self to the liberated beings (siddha-âtman), who know neither birth nor growth nor death. Only from the empirical (vyavahâra) point of view can the individuated selves be said to possess such characteristics as form and finitude, whereas from the pure (shuddha) viewpoint they are endowed with the same purity as those who are liberated.
The Jaina Ladder to Liberation
At the heart of Jainism lies a carefully worked-out path that leads the faithful from the fetters of conditioned existence and suffering to absolute freedom, unsurpassable joy, and incomparable energy. Although the recommended procedure for a prosperous spiritual life is to abandon everything and to dedicate oneself completely to a life of renunciation and penance, the Jaina authorities nevertheless deem it in principle possible even for a householder to become liberated.
The Yoga Tradition Page 31