Unknown Pilgrims

SR No.: 007014
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: N Shanta
Publisher: Sri Satguru Publications Delhi
Publication Year: 1997
Total Pages: 820
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

Page 329

Tattva, Reality
301
[The śruta-jñānin) recognises only two points of view; when he has realised his essential nature, he [is] beyond the relativity of this discrimination.61
This brief account of karman serves to indicate its great importance, an importance that is clearly discernible not only in numerous doctrinal treatises, but also in many literary works in various local languages, as also in iconography. Karman crops us always and everywhere in its many different forms and guises. 62
The highest form of ascetic practice is by definition, directed towards one single unique goal: that of realising the jiva in its original purity and, to this end, of striving to disconnect it from the karmas which are the cause of its opacity, that is, for a start, from this material body. 63 We shall see in the following pages the way in which this karman infiltrates and penetrates the faculties of the jiva and, later, what methods are to be employed to dissociate the jiva from its karman.
D - Asrava: The invasion of the jiva by karmic matter
The word äsrava denotes a state of flux, the flowing of some substance or the act of invasion, penetration by some substance. This word is used to express the action of karmic matter upon the jiva.
61 doňhavi nayāņa bhanidam jāņai navarim tu samayapaờibaddho
na du nayapakkham ginhadi kimcivi nayapakkhaparihiņo. SamSa 143; lit. beyond every point of view, all trace is lost of any point of view. The śruta-jñānin is the one who, thanks to assiduous study of the Scriptures, is capable of understanding the jiva according to both vyavahāra and niścaya, but he has not yet experienced the essence of the jiva.
62 Cf. TS II, 1.
63 To give a very concrete example, we may mention Sadhvi Śri Bālū, called "videha ki sädhikā," the one who follows the spiritual path without a body. The biography of this sadhvi relates how, during the last years of her carthly life, she became more and more conscous that the atman and the deha (body) are totally incompatible. Thence arose her zeal to expend her every effort on becoming ever more intensely aware of this reality.