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Chapter 2 Sutra 3749
1. The body that can sometimes be small, large, sometimes thin, sometimes fat, sometimes one, sometimes many, etc. – is called Vaikṛtia.
2. The body that can only be created by a monk who possesses the state of the Fourteenth (Tirthankara) – is called Āhāra.
3. The body that is luminous and is the cause of digestion and transformation of the consumed food, etc. – is called Tejas.
4. The vow (Vrata) is the same as the observer (Kasmahū). [37]
Among the five bodies mentioned above, the grossest is the Ārdhakan body; Vaikṛtia is subtler than it; Āhāra is even subtler than Vaikṛtia. In this way, Tejas is subtler than Āhāra, and Kaṇa is successively subtler than Tejas.
Q. – What is the difference between the gross and the subtle here? The distinction between gross and subtle lies in the looseness and density of the structure, not in the dimensions. While Vaikṛtia is subtler than Ārdhakan, it is still coarser than Āhāra. Similarly, Āhāra is also subtle in relation to its previous body and coarse in relation to its subsequent body. This means that the gross and subtle should be understood in terms of perspective. The essence of this is that a body’s structure being loose in relation to another body’s structure makes it coarse, while the other one is subtle. The basis of the looseness and density of the structure lies in the Pudgala transformation. Pudgala has the power to achieve various types of transformations. Hence, when it is transformed into a loose form, it is called gross, even though it has less dimension; and it may have a lot of dimension yet, as it gets more compact, it is termed subtle.