Sallekhana is Not Suicide

SR No.: 001568
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T K Tukol
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1976
Total Pages: 124
Language: English
Classification: Book_English & Religion
File Size: 8 MB

Page 21

10
What is Sallekhana ?
strength of mind and enthusiasm, he should keep his mind supremely happy with the nectar of spiritual knowledge. He should gradually give up food and take liquids like milk, butter-milk etc. Later on he should even give up milk etc. and take only warm water. Thereafter he should give up even warm water and fast according to his own capacity and quit the body while engrossed in his mind with the meditation of the five salutation mantras (pañcanamaskára-mantra ). It is ordained that during the observance of the vow, he should avoid the five transgressions : (1) a feeling that it would have been better if death would come a little later; (2) wishing for a speedy death; (3) entertaining fear as to how he would bear the pangs of death; (4) remembering friends and relatives at the time of death; (5) wishing for a particular kind of fruit as a result of penance.
Umasvāmi has made a brief reference to this vow in his Tattvārthādhiganasūtra which is a compendium of the Principles of Jainism and has laid down that Sallekhana should be adopted most willingly or voluntarily when death is very near.
Reference has already been made to the verses of Samantabhadra about the mental attitude of the person who had adopted the vow. He should be pure in thoughts and must have severed all connections, having forgiven everybody and asked everybody's pardon in sweet words. A person with Right Faith and Right Knowledge would always believe that being born a human being is itself a rare chance for annihilitation of all Karmas and that increased attachments to relatives and friends, business and occupations, and accumulations of property of any kind would only entangle the soul with new Karmas of different kinds of varying intensity. These ties are all due to Karmas. They have nothing to do with the individual and the individual has nothing to do with them. Every kind of relationship and attachment perish
2. Ratnakaranda Śrāvakācāra, Verses 122-29. 3. Reality, Canto VII, Sutra 22.