Nine Lives

by William Dalrymple

  The word Jain derives from Jina, meaning liberator or spiritual conqueror. The Jinas or Tirthankaras—ford-makers—were a series of twenty-four human teachers who each discovered how to escape the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. Through their heroic tapasya—bodily austerities—they gained omniscient and transcendent knowledge which revealed to them the nature of the reality of the great theatre of the universe, in every dimension. The most recent of those, according to the Jains, was the historical figure of Mahavira (599–529 BC)–the Great Hero—a prince of Magadha, in modern Bihar, who renounced the world at the age of thirty to become a wandering thinker and ascetic.

  Mahavira elaborated to his followers a complex cosmological system that the Jains still expound 2,600 years later. Like followers of other Indian faiths they believe in an immortal and indestructible soul, or jivan, and that the sum of one’s actions determines the nature of one’s future rebirth. However, the Jains diverge from Hindus and Buddhists in many ways. They reject the Hindu idea that the world was created or destroyed by omnipotent gods, and they mock the pretensions of the Brahmins, who believe that ritual purity and temple sacrifices can bring salvation. As a Jain monk explains to a group of hostile Brahmins in one of the most ancient Jain scriptures, the most important sacrifice for Jains is not some puja, or ritual, but the sacrifice of one’s own body: “Austerity is my sacrifical fire,” says the monk, “and my life is the place where the fire is kindled. Mental and physical effort are my ladle for the oblation, and my body is the dung fuel for the fire, my actions my firewood. I offer up an oblation praised by the wise seers consisting of my restraint, effort and calm.”

  Crucially, the Jains differ from both Hindus and Buddhists in their understanding of karma, which for other faiths means simply the fruit of your actions. Jains, however, conceive of karma as a fine material substance that physically attaches itself to the soul, polluting and obscuring its potential for bliss by weighing it down with pride, anger, delusion and greed, and so preventing it from reaching its ultimate destination at the summit of the universe. To gain final liberation, you must live life in a way that stops you accumulating more karma, while wiping clean the karma you have accumulated in previous lives. The only way to do this is to embrace an ascetic life and to follow the path of meditation and rigorous self-denial taught by the Tirthankaras. You must embrace a life of world renunciation, non-attachment and an extreme form of non-violence.

  The soul’s journey takes place in a universe conceived in a way that is different from that of any other faith. For Jains, the universe is shaped like a gigantic cosmic human body. Above the body is a canopy containing the liberated and perfected souls—siddhas—who, like the Tirthankaras, have escaped the cycle of rebirths. At the top of the body, level with the chest, is the celestial upper world, the blissful home of the gods.

  At waist level is the middle world, where human beings live in a series of concentric rings of land and ocean. The central landmass of this world—the continent of the Rose Apple Tree—is bounded by the mighty Himalayas, and set within ramparts of diamonds. At its very centre, the axis mundi, lies the divine sanctuary of the Jinas, Mount Meru, with its two suns and two moons, its parks and woods and its groves of wish-granting trees. Adjacent to this, but slightly to the south, lies the continent of Bharata or India. Here can be found the great princely capitals, surrounded by ornamental lakes blooming with lotus flowers.

  Below this disc lies the hell world of the Jains. Here souls who have committed great sins live as hell beings in a state of terrible heat, unquenchable thirst and endless pain, under the watch of a group of malignant and semi-divine jailers, the asuras, who are strongly opposed to the dharma of the Tirthankaras.

  In this world, there are no creator gods: depending on its actions and karma, a soul can be reincarnated as a god, but eventually, when its store of merit is used up, the god must undergo the agonies of death and fall from heaven, to be reborn as a mortal in the middle world. The same is true of hell beings. Once they have paid through suffering for their bad actions, they can rise to be reborn in the middle world and again begin the cycle of death and rebirth—depending on their karma, as human beings, animals, plants or tiny unseen creatures of the air. Like the fallen gods, former hell beings can also aspire to achieving moksha, the final liberation of the soul from earthly existence and suffering. Even the Tirthankara Mahavira, the Great Hero himself, spent time as a hell being, and then as a lion, before rising to be a human and so finding the path to Enlightenment. It is only human beings—not the hedonistic gods—who can gain liberation, and the way to do this is completely to renounce the world and its passions, its desires and attachments, and to become a Jain ascetic. As such, the monk or nun must embrace the Three Jewels, namely right knowledge, right faith and right conduct, and to take five vows: no violence, no untruth, no stealing, no sex, no attachments. They wander the roads of India, avoiding any acts of violence, however small, and meditating on the great questions, thinking about the order and purpose of the universe, and attempting to ford the crossing places that lead through suffering to salvation. For the Jains, then, to be an ascetic is a higher calling than to be a god.

  It is a strange, austere and in some ways very harsh religion; but that, explained Prasannamati Mataji, is exactly the point.

  At ten o’clock each day, Prasannamati Mataji eats her one daily meal. On my third day in Sravanabelagola, I went to the math, or monastery, to watch what turned out to be as much a ritual as a breakfast.

  Mataji, wrapped as ever in her unstitched white cotton sari, was sitting cross-legged on a low wooden stool which itself was raised on a wooden pallet in the middle of an empty ground-floor room. Behind her, her fan and coconut water pot rested against the wall. In front, five or six middle-class Jain laywomen in saris were fussing around with small buckets of rice, dal and masala chickpeas, eagerly attending on Mataji, whom they treated with extreme deference and respect. Mataji, however, sat with eyes lowered, not looking at them except glancingly, accepting without comment whatever she was offered. There was complete silence: no one spoke; any communication took place by hand signals, nods and pointed fingers.

  As I approached the door, Mataji signalled with a single raised palm that I should remain where I was. One of the women explained that as I had not had a ritual bath, and had probably eaten meat, I must stay outside. Notebook in hand, I observed from the open door.

  For an hour, Mataji ate slowly, and in total silence. The woman waited for her to nod, and then with a long spoon put a titbit of food into her cupped and waiting hands. Each morsel she then turned over carefully with the thumb of her right hand, looking for a stray hair, or winged insect, or ant, or any living creature which might have fallen into the strictly vegetarian food, so rendering it impure. If she were to find anything, explained one of the laywomen, the rules were clear: she must drop the food on the floor, reject the entire meal and fast until ten o’clock the following morning.

  After she had finished her vegetables, one of Mataji’s attendants poured a small teaspoonful of ghee onto her rice. When a woman offered a further spoonful of dal, the slightest shake of Mataji’s head indicated that she was done. Boiled water was then poured, still warm, from a metal cup into the waiting bowl of Mataji’s hands. She drank some, then swirled a further cupful of it around in her mouth. She picked her teeth with her finger, and washed water around her gums, before spitting it out into a waiting spittoon. After that, she was finished. Mataji rose and formally blessed the women with her peacock fan.

  When the full ritual of the silent meal was finished, Mataji led me to the reception room of the monastery guest house. There she sat herself down cross-legged on a wicker mat in front of a low writing desk. On this were placed the two volumes of the scriptures she was currently studying, and about which she was writing a commentary. At a similar desk at the far end of the room sat a completely naked man—the maharaj of the math, silently absorbed in his writing. We nodded to each other, and he retu
rned to his work. He was there, I presumed, to chaperone Mataji during our conversation: it would have been forbidden for her to stay alone in a room with a male who was not her guru.

  When she had settled herself, Mataji began to tell me the story of how she had renounced the world, and why she had decided to take the ritual of initiation, or diksha, as a Jain nun.

  “I was born in Raipur, Chattisgarh, in 1972,” said Mataji. “In those days my name was Rekha. My family were wealthy merchants. They hailed from Rajasthan but moved to Chattisgarh for business reasons. My father had six brothers and we lived as a joint family, all together in the same house. My parents had had two boys before I was born, and for three generations there had been no girls in the family. I was the first one, and they all loved me, not least because I was considered a pretty and lively little girl, and had unusually fair skin and thick black hair, which I grew very long.

  “I was pampered by all of them, and my uncles would compete to spoil me. I was very fond of rasgulla and pedha [milky sweetmeats] and each one of my uncles would bring boxes for me. If I had gone to sleep by the time they returned from their warehouse they would wake me to give me the sweets, or sometimes a big pot of sweet, syrupy gulab jamun. Every desire of mine was fulfilled, and I was everyone’s favourite. Nobody ever beat or disciplined me, even in jest. In fact I do not remember even once my parents raising their voice, still less hitting me.

  “It was a very happy childhood. I had two best friends, one was a Jain from the rival Svetambara sect, the other a Brahmin girl, and their parents were also textile merchants. So we would all play with our dolls, and our families would get their tailors to design elaborate saris and salwars for them. When we were a little older, my uncles would take us to the movies. I loved Rekha, because she had the same name as me, and Amitabh Bachchan because he was the number-one hero in those days. My favourite movie was Coolie.

  “Then, when I was about thirteen, I was taken to meet a monk called Dayasagar Maharaj—his name means the Lord of the Ocean of Compassion. He was a former cowherd who had taken diksha when he was a boy of only ten years old, and now had a deep knowledge of the scriptures. He had come to Raipur to do his chaturmasa—the monsoon break when we Jains are forbidden to walk in case we accidentally kill the unseen life that inhabits the puddles. So for three months the maharaj was in our town, and every day he used to preach and read for all the young children. He told us how to live a peaceful life and how to avoid hurting other living creatures: what we should eat, and how we should strain water to avoid drinking creatures too small to be seen. I was very impressed and started thinking. It didn’t take long before I decided I wanted to be like him. His words and his teachings totally changed my life.

  “Within a few weeks I decided to give up eating after the hours of darkness, and also gave up eating any plant that grows beneath the earth: onions, potatoes, carrots, garlic and all root vegetables. Jain monks are forbidden these as you kill the plant when you uproot it—we are allowed to eat only plants such as rice which can survive the harvest of their grain.

  “When I also gave up milk and jaggery—two things I loved—as a way of controlling my desires, everyone tried to dissuade me, especially my father, who once even tried to force-feed me. They thought I was too young to embark on this path, and everyone wanted me to be their little doll at home. This was not what I wanted.

  “When I was fourteen, I announced that I wanted to join the Sangha—the Jain community of which my maharaj was part. Again my family opposed me, saying I was just a young girl, and should not worry about such things. But eventually, when I insisted, they agreed to let me go for a couple of weeks in the school holidays to study the dharma, hoping that I would be put off by the harshness of the Sangha life. They also insisted that some of the family servants should accompany me. But the life of the Sangha and the teachings I heard there were a revelation to me. Once I was settled in, I simply refused to come back. The servants did their best to persuade me, but I was completely adamant, and the servants had to go back on their own.

  “Eventually, after two months, my father came to take me home. He told me that one of my uncles had had a son, and that I was to come home as there was to be a big family function. I agreed to come, but only if he promised to bring me back to the Sangha afterwards. My father promised to do so, but at the function all my relations insisted that I was too young, and that I should not be allowed to go back. I stayed with my family for one month, and then insisted that they return me. They refused. So for three days I did not eat—not even a drop of water. The atmosphere at home was very bad. There was a lot of pressure and everyone was very angry, and they called me stubborn and uncaring. But eventually, on the third day, they gave in, and did return me to the Sangha.

  “They stayed in close touch, sending money and clothes, and paying for me to go on pilgrimages. They knew my guru would take good care of me, and I think in some ways they were pleased I had taken a pious path; but in their hearts they still didn’t want me to take full diksha. I, on the other hand, was happy in the Sangha, and knew I had taken the right path. When you eat a mango, you have to throw away the stone. The same is true of our life as munis. No matter how attached you are to your family and to the things of this world, whatever efforts you make, ultimately you have to leave them behind. You simply cannot take them with you. However powerful you are, however knowledgeable, however much you love your mother and father, you still have to go. Worldly pleasures and the happiness of family life are both equally temporary. There is no escape. Birth and death are both inevitable; both are beyond our control.

  “Like a small child who goes to school and then grows up to become an adult; or like a small mango that gets bigger and bigger, changes its colour and becomes ripe; so ageing and death are innate in our nature. We have no choice. Each of us is born, goes through childhood, becomes an adult, ages and dies. It’s a natural process and you can’t go back, at least until your next life. The only thing is to accept this, and to embrace the Jain path of knowledge, meditation and penance as the sole way to free yourself from this cycle. It’s the only way to attain the absolute.

  “After spending some time with the Sangha I felt I had understood this, and that I was living in the best way I could. The more you lead a good life, the clearer and sharper your thoughts on such things become—you begin to be able to cut through the illusions of the world, and to see things as they really are. Suddenly it seemed to me that, though I loved my family, they were only really interested in making money and displaying their wealth—many lay Jains are like this, I fear.

  “If you close the door, you cannot see; open it a little and all becomes clear. Just as a burned seed does not sprout, so once you renounce the world you will not be sucked into the whirlpool of samsara. I was quite clear now that what I was doing was right. I also found that following this spiritual path brought happiness in this life—something I had not really expected.

  “For me, the Sangha was itself like a rebirth, a second life. I felt no real homesickness, nor any wish to return to my old life. The gurus taught me how to live in a new way: how to sit as a Jain nun, how to stand, how to talk, how to sleep. Everything was taught anew, as if from the beginning. I felt happy in this new life; I felt sure I was on the path to salvation, and was no longer being distracted by the outside world. I knew I had done the right thing, and even though I didn’t want to hurt my family, I was only sad that I had already wasted so much of my life.

  “I really had no time for worrying, anyway. Our guruji made sure we were totally occupied with lectures, study, classes and travel. All the time, in between days of walking, our lessons in Sanskrit and Prakrit were continuing. I found I loved Sanskrit—I loved its complexity and perfection—and after a while I was good enough to read some of our Jain literature and scriptures in the languages in which they were written. We are encouraged to carry on studying and gaining in knowledge until we can get rid of the last delusions of samsara. Twenty-four years I have b
een studying now, and I still have a lot to learn.

  “In those early days, we also began to learn how to meditate. Our guru trained us to get up at 3 a.m., and on the days we were not travelling, we would spend the early morning—the most peaceful time of the day—in meditation, striving for self-knowledge. We were trained to think of the twenty-four Tirthankaras, to visualise them, and to contemplate within our hearts their attributes, their lives and the decisions they had made. We were shown how to sit in a full lotus—the padmasana–with our eyes closed. My ability grew with my studies: first I studied the Sanskrit scriptures, then during the meditation I would recollect what I had read, and attempt to visualise what I had studied. Like a spider making a cobweb, with meditation you need patience to keep building. Once you know all about the Tirthankaras it is not difficult to picture them. It is like a child learning to cycle: as you cycle, you master the art, until eventually you hardly notice that you are cycling at all. But as with the bicycle, the first steps can be very hard, and very disheartening.

  “Learning the scriptures, learning Prakrit and Sanskrit, learning to meditate, learning to accept tapasya—it is all a very slow process. When you sow a seed, you have to wait for it to grow and become a tree and bear fruit—a coconut palm will not fruit for many years. It is the same with us. There is a lot of time between sowing the seed and reaping the produce. You do not sow the seed and expect to get the fruits the next day. With our tapasya, with the deprivations we experience, you do not expect to get immediate rewards, or even necessarily to get the rewards at all in this life. You may only get the rewards many lives into the future.

  “Like the Tirthankaras, you should have faith in the Jain path: faith is everything. For without the spiritual knowledge that the Jain faith contains you can never attain liberation. Spiritual knowledge is like ghee in the milk: you can’t see it, so initially you just have to trust that it is there. Only if you learn the proper techniques can you reap the full benefits of the milk’s potential: you must learn the way of splitting the milk into curds, then how to churn the curds and finally how to heat the butter to get ghee. The sun is always there, even if the clouds are covering it. In the same way, the soul is trying to reach for liberation, even if it is encumbered by sin and desire and attachments. By following the Jain path you can clear the cloud, and learn the method to get the ghee from the milk. Without the Jain dharma you are a soul tormented and you cannot know any lasting happiness. But with a guru to show you the right path, and to teach you the true nature of the soul, all this can be changed.