Facets of Jaina Religiousness in Comparative Light

SR No.: 001532
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: L M Joshi
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1981
Total Pages: 88
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, Religion, & 12 Anuprekshas
File Size: 6 MB

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THEMES OF SOTERIOLOGICAL REFLECTION observation, and stinking; one feels ashamed of naming this door of urine and blood.”58 Haribhadra, reaffirming the classical Indian attitude towards impurity of the body, says that "this body is lubricated by the dirty liquids which spring forth and flow from its nine holes. To imagine purity even in such a body is indeed a mockery of great delusion."59 Subhacandra remarks that this body is full of worms and parasites; it is tortured by disease and is tottered by old age; how can the great-souled ones delight in it ?60
Almost similar attitude towards impurity of human body is expounded in Buddhist literature. The Dhammapada refers to the body as “a mass of sores, a heaped up lump, diseased", as a "putrid mass", and as "a city made of bones, plastered with flesh and blood, wherein are stored old age, disease, pride and detraction.”61 A famous Sutta describes the impurities of the human body and recommends reflection on its worthlessness in the following words. “This body is an assemblage of bones, sinews, plastered with membrane and flesh, and wrapped in skin; it is not seen as it really is. It is filled with intestiness etc. and with mucus, saliva, perspiration, blood, and the fluid which lubricates its joints. Impurity flows from its nine streams. A fool led by nescience thinks it is a good thing. When it lies dead, swollen and livid, thrown in the cemetery, relatives do not care for it. Dogs, wolves, crows and jackals eat it. This body, with two feet, is cherished inspite of its being impure, ill-smelling, full of many kinds of stench, and trickling here and there. He who with such a body thinks to exalt himself and despise others, this is nothing but blindness.")62 Another Sutra teaches thus : asārako ayam kāyo mātāpit rsonitaśukrasambhūto aśucipütidurgandha svabhävo rāgadveșamohabhayavişādataskarākulo nityam satanapatanabhedanavikiraņavidhvamsanadharmā nānāvyādhisatasahasranīta. "This body is insubstantial, sprung from the blood and seed of mother and father, by nature impure, putried and ill-smelling, distressed by attachment, hatred, delusion, fear, despondency and thieves; always liable to breaking, falling, cutting, scattering, crumbling and full of a hundred thousand different diseases."83
In passing we may note that the idea of "nine doors" or "nine streams” of the human body is mentioned in Brahmanical and Chinese texts also.64 These texts, how
58. Ibid., verse 1014. 59. Yogaśāstra, IV. 73. 60. Jhānārnava, on asucitva, verse 4. 61. Dhammapada, vv. 147-150 (abridged), 62. Suttanipata (Vijayasutta), vy. 192-205 (abridged). 63. Dharmasangitisūtra, in the Siksa samuccaya, p. 124. 64. See Svetasvatar a Upanişad, III. 18; Bhagavadgīta, V. 13. (nava dvāre pure dehi etc.), Kapha Upa
nişad, V.1, refers to the body as a city with eleven doors (puram ekādaśa dvāram) in which "the Unborn One" dwells. See also Texts of Taoism in Sacred Books of the East, vol. 39, p. 180.