Gandhis Teachers Rajchandra Ravjibhai Mehta

SR No.: 006754
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Satish Sharma
Publisher: Gujarat Vidyapith Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 2005
Total Pages: 260
Language: English
Classification: Book_English & Rajchandra
File Size: 11 MB

Page 121

Philosophy of Six Padas
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along with the orientations of attachment, lust, greed, and negative emotions like anger, hatred, jealousy, anxiety, and low self-esteem. Passionate negative dispositions are responsible for the sufferings and continuation of cycles of birth and death - "it is any craving that makes for rebirth and is tied up with passion's delight and culls satisfaction, now here now there."27 Avidya, tanha, and other negative dispositions can cease through the Noble Eigthfold Path, following of which requires determination, conviction, sustained effort, self-discipline, mental reflection, enlightenment, and nonviolence. The Eightfold Consciousness is of the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and of discrimination, constant thought, and knowledge of the self. It is the consciousness of self which goes through repeated births and deaths, all else is like a mirage or bubble.28 Body, sensations, and perceptions are perishable, but consciousness of self is everlasting and all-illuminating. Moksha or nirvana? basically is freedom from passionate negative dispositions and thereby the end of worldly sufferings and cycles of birth and death. The three kinds of suffering to be ended are: those caused by diseases of the body, mental disturbances, and unrest; those caused extraneously by men or beasts, and those caused by supernatural agents, planets, and elements.30 Negatively moksha or nirvana is freedom from passions, ignorance, selfish cravings, and other negative dispositions. Positively it is attainment of all-encompassing prajna (wisdom and enlightenment) and kaurna (love and compassion).31 Attainment of the state of nirvana is described by Buddha as follows:32
Then said the Blessed one to the disciples: Everything, O disciples, is in flames. And what everything, O disciples, is in flames? The eye, O disciples, is in flames; the visible is in flames, the feeling which arises from the contact with the visible, be it pleasure, be it pain, be it neither pleasure nor pain, this also is in flames. By what fire is it kindled? By the fire of desire, by the fire of hate, by the fire of fascination, it is kindled: thus I say. The ear is in flames..."